Google Cloud Boosts Web3 Presence With Polygon Partnership

Google continues to deepen its participation in the web3 industry, unveiling a new partnership with Polygon and expanding its web3 accelerator program over the past two days.

On Thursday, Google Cloud said it has entered a “multi-year strategic alliance” with Polygon to provide tooling and infrastructure to developers building on Polygon’s PoS Chain, zkEVM, and Supernets scaling solutions.

Google will make its node hosting and management service, Blockchain Node Engine, available for Polygon PoS Chain node operators as part of the deal between the two firms.

“Developers using Blockchain Node Engine will no longer have to worry about configuring or running their Polygon PoS nodes; they can instead focus on growth,” Google said in an announcement.

Polygon’s MATIC token reversed earlier losses after the news broke.

Undeterred by the recent bear trend, Google Cloud launched a dedicated web3 team in May 2022 and has since inked deals with top firms in the sector, including Coinbase, Tezos, and Polygon.

Polygon’s PoS Chain is the fifth-largest smart contract chain with $1B in total value locked, while its recently launched zkEVM secures $5.5M, according to L2Beat.

Blockchain Node Engine

Google Cloud launched Blockchain Node Engine in October 2022, initially supporting only Ethereum nodes. The platform went live one month after Ethereum completed its transition to Proof of Stake consensus. Google Cloud plans to add support for Solana later this year.

Polygon and Google have been working together since October 2021, when Google Cloud made its data analysis platform, BigQuery, available to access on-chain data for Polygon in real-time.

Accelerator Program

On April 25, Google Cloud expanded its accelerator program for web3 startups, further demonstrating its commitment to the blockchain sector.

Pre-seed startups participating in Google’s accelerator program can receive up to $2,000 worth of Google Cloud credits for two years, while funded firms may access $200,000 in Cloud and Firebase services.

In total, more than a million dollars in grants are now on offer from Google and its 11 partners – Alchemy, Aptos, Base, Celo, Flow, Hedera, Nansen, Near, Polygon, Solana, and Thirdweb.