Google’s Secret Weapon: A New Layer 1 Blockchain for Finance
Google is officially preparing to enter the blockchain market — not with an experimental service, but with its very own Layer 1 network. The new project, named Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL), is positioned as a fully fledged Layer 1 blockchain, on par with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The plans were revealed by Rich Widmann, Head of Web3 Strategy at Google. According to him, GCUL will serve as a neutral, high-performance platform for financial institutions. It will support smart contracts written in Python, with the overarching goal of becoming a universal environment for settlement and asset tokenization.
As early as March 2025, Google Cloud, in partnership with financial giant CME Group, began testing GCUL for wholesale payments and tokenized asset transactions. At the time, it was described as “a new distributed ledger from Google Cloud.” It is now clear that this referred to Google’s own Layer 1 network.
Widmann stressed that financial firms have a natural interest in an independent platform. For instance, Tether is unlikely to use Circle’s blockchain, and payment processor Adyen would hardly build on Stripe’s infrastructure. GCUL, in contrast, is envisioned as a neutral solution open to all organizations.
A comparison chart presented by Widmann quickly spread across social media, highlighting distinctions between GCUL and blockchain projects from Circle and Stripe. The document emphasized that Google’s network is already live in a closed testnet and will leverage the vast scale of the company’s cloud ecosystem.
Still, a fundamental question remains: how decentralized will GCUL truly be? Decentralization is often regarded as the core principle of blockchain technology. Critics are already voicing doubts: “If Tether won’t adopt Circle’s network, and Adyen won’t adopt Stripe’s, why would anyone commit to Google’s? The real value of blockchain lies in credible neutrality — and that can only be achieved in a decentralized, public network,” wrote users on X.
Not everyone agrees with this critique. Bitcoin analyst James Check noted that, for commercial applications, high throughput and reliability often outweigh perfect decentralization. He pointed out that both stablecoins and popular L2 networks, such as Base, are not fully decentralized — yet precisely because of this, they deliver the speed and convenience businesses demand.
So far, technical details remain scarce. Google has promised to reveal more about the internal architecture of GCUL in the coming months. What is known is that the testnet is operational, and the company is betting on a combination of neutrality and the network effect of its cloud. Should the project gain traction, Google will find itself in direct competition with Circle, Stripe, and other fintech players already developing their own blockchains for settlement and tokenization.
