After Amazon’s AWS service taking a good share of blockchain operation by running a significant number of Ethereum nodes, Google Cloud too entered the node hosting space. The Blockchain Node Engine will be a fully-managed node hosting service that will support Web3 development beginning with Ethereum.
Web3 has become the buzz word for 2022 after the success of DeFi, and everyone is jumping in. Summits and events regularly feature Web3 as a main theme, and Web 2.0 platforms, including e-commerce players who would be specifically interested in integrating Web3 tools, are looking toward Web3 as the direction to venture into.
After a recent announcement from Google Cloud on its intent to start accepting cryptocurrency as payment comes this major announcement, a formal step into the blockchain infrastructure and hosting space.
Google Cloud considers blockchain as the new way to store and move information. A note said: “Blockchain is changing the way the world stores and moves its information. Building on our commitment to help Web3 developers build and deploy new products on blockchain-based platforms, today we’re thrilled to announce Google Cloud’s Blockchain Node Engine.”
According to the announcement, “While self-managed nodes are often difficult to deploy and require constant management, Blockchain Node Engine is a fully managed node-hosting service that can minimize the need for node operations. Web3 companies who require dedicated nodes can relay transactions, deploy smart contracts, and read or write blockchain data with the reliability, performance, and security they expect from Google Cloud compute and network infrastructure.”
The service offered by Amazon is called Amazon Managed Blockchain. It allows joining pubic or private networks with blockchains like Hyperledger Fabric and Ethereum.
Google has taken new steps this year to support developers making apps on blockchain. It has set up the Digital Assets Team for support. Some blockchain ventures using Google Cloud are Sky Mavis (a gaming venture), Nansen (market intelligence), Dapper Labs, and the well-known blockchain Solana.
What advantages can users get from using Google’s Blockchain Node Engine?
Blockchains require a network of nodes to run and validate transactions. Setting up a node is a cumbersome, long process as anyone who has tried it would attest. It involves activating the client software, like an Ethereum client (called geth), or using a third-party client like Parity. This can be done easily, but the node then needs to download the latest blockchain along with all the blocks starting from its Genesis, or block no. 0. This process, depending on the computer set up, memory and connection speed, can take days.
According to Google Cloud, they can “can make this process faster and easier by allowing developers to deploy a new node with a single operation, and specify the desired region and network (mainnet, testnet).”
Other benefits include: security with a private cloud firewall and cloud armor, full management that monitors the system and its continuous availability with restart facility after an outage, and scaling of Web3 apps.
A private preview of the service is currently being offered to those who want to see what’s in the box – https://cloud.google.com/web3
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