Why Google Cloud is the ideal platform for Block.one and other DLT companies

Late last year, Google Cloud joined the EOS community, a leading open-source platform for blockchain innovation and performance, and is taking steps to support the EOS Public Blockchain by becoming a block producer (BP). At the time, we outlined how our planned participation underscores the importance of blockchain to the future of business, government, and society. Today, I want to outline why Google Cloud is uniquely positioned to be an excellent partner for Block.one and other distributed ledger technology (DLT) companies.

We've recently seen an unprecedented rate of digital transformation across all industries, as a huge proportion of the economy has moved online. New startups, along with legacy businesses reimagining themselves as software companies, are in aggregate anticipated to account for thirty percent of economic activity by 2025, up from one percent today.

As this digital transformation takes hold, businesses increasingly need to build integrated service networks with strong requirements for trust and coordination. This is what a DLT can provide. The EOSIO protocol, developed by Block.one and the basis for the EOS Public Blockchain, is an example of such a DLT. It’s built for speed, scale, and low-cost transactions—all of which make EOSIO an attractive platform upon which to build networked applications. 

This is where Google Cloud comes in. We are uniquely qualified to help Block.one and other companies develop and operate their DLT networks. A number of our products are well-suited to DLT applications, whether it is the scalability and reliability of our network, our innovation in Confidential Computing, or our leadership in AI/ML and data analytics. 

Confidential Computing

Confidential Computing is an emerging technology that encrypts data in-use—while it is being processed. Confidential Computing environments keep data encrypted in memory and elsewhere outside of the CPUs. Along with Google Cloud's advanced capabilities around data in-transit and at-rest, Confidential Computing adds a "third pillar" to encryption by encrypting data while in-use. Confidential Computing is available in nine Google Cloud regions and will continue to extend to a broader set of the regions to support customers like Block.one. 

Confidential Computing leverages the secure encrypted virtualization supported by 2nd Gen AMD EPYC™ CPUs, ensuring data will stay private and encrypted while it is used, indexed, queried, or trained on. Confidential VMs followed by Confidential GKE Nodes are the first two products in Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing portfolio. Confidential VMs and Confidential GKE Nodes offer the cryptographic level of isolation while giving customers an easy-to-use solution that doesn’t require changing code in apps or compromising on performance. 

Computing directly on encrypted data is a must-have for the custody and handling of digital assets, and it creates exciting new possibilities, such as machine learning on private data, decentralized exchange of assets, and preventing collusion, exfiltration, and contamination of the network by rogue peers.

AI and data analytics

Google Cloud’s leading Cloud AI services, and the smart analytics services upon which they are built, enable businesses to get more value out of their data. The broad applicability of this pattern is evident from its many and varied use cases, such as AI for trade finance and decision support for advertising. 

DLT data on open networks are inherently public and can thus be indexed and made searchable, as we've demonstrated and continue to do for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a number of other public DLTs, and our partners have followed our lead by ETL of DLT data into BigQuery.

Perhaps more importantly, exciting new opportunities emerge by combining Cloud AI with Confidential Computing. For example, by executing DLT smart contracts within a trusted execution environment, machine learning accelerators such as Cloud TPU can be used for DLT coprocessing. In addition to computing capabilities, the trustworthiness of APIs can also be ensured and this allows external data to be used in smart contracts. We've previously written about the possibilities of building DLT/cloud hybrid applications.

Network performance and security

Google Cloud’s low-latency premium network tier allows peers to synchronize more quickly, enabling the higher transaction throughputs. Our network also peers directly with many ISPs, meaning that there's less lag when customers interact with their digital assets, critical to real-world use cases such as retail point-of-sale and gaming. 

Google’s systems are designed for security and reliability on a global scale. When DLT customers are selecting a cloud platform, a huge part of what they’re looking for is infrastructure. Our infrastructure doesn’t rely on any single technology to make it secure. Our stack builds security through progressive layers that deliver defense in depth. From the physical premises to the purpose-built servers, networking equipment and custom security chips, to the low-level software stack running on every machine, our entire hardware infrastructure is controlled, secured, built and hardened by Google. 

Learn more and get involved

Developers, you can learn more about projects built with EOSIO on Google Cloud in the EOSIO Beyond Blockchain Hackathon—submissions are open until April 6, 2021. Or get building right away by learning how to build with EOSIO. Keep up with Google's latest EOS block producer activities at https://dlt.withgoogle.com/eos.