It’s been a huge week for EOS and this edition of the EOS Hot Sauce will focus entirely on the flurry of positive news for the EOS Mainnet and what it means for the future of the network.
The biggest news of the week came from Block.one when they announced that Google Cloud has the intention of registering as a block producer on the EOS Mainnet. The news was confirmed by Google and very well received by both EOS token holders and block producers.
It’s a clear signal that Google Cloud sees the tremendous potential in EOSIO technology and the value of being an operator on its largest and most valuable network, the EOS Mainnet.
“Google Cloud’s planned participation underscores the importance of blockchain to the future of business, government, and society.” -Block.one
Learn more about Google Cloud’s candidacy as an EOS Mainnet block producer on Google’s new EOS Block Producer web page. Google has been a long time supporter of various open-source projects and in their short EOS Block Producer FAQ they mention that one of the reasons they want to join the ecosystem is to better understand and enable developers that want to build on EOSIO via the Google Cloud Platform, which offers Google-grade security, scale, global network, approach to open-source and developer expertise.
On their #BUIDL with Google Cloud page, they confirm that the EOS Mainnet dataset is coming soon to BigQuery, which allows users to access blockchain data via SQL and find meaningful insights rapidly. Google has acknowledged that their desire to produce blocks on the EOS Mainnet is linked to their desire to better serve developers who wish to build on EOSIO.
In terms of how engaged Block.one expects Google Cloud to be in the EOS ecosystem, Kevin Rose, VP of Public Blockchain Engagement had this to say on the topic:
“It’s really up to Google Cloud and what their plans are for engaging with the EOS Network community. And because voting on EOS is open-ended and continuous, to ensure that the top 21 are always a real-time reflection of the aggregate will of the EOS token-holders, we will be constantly evaluating Google Cloud against our criteria, just as we do with all Block Producer candidates.”
As expected, Brendan Blumer and Dan Larimer were active and sharing the good news on social media.
“As the pool of potential network operators continues to diversify, token holders will be further empowered to select candidates they feel best support the performance and evolution of EOS. Excited for Allen Day and Google Cloud to be engaging in the EOS ecosystem as a BP Candidate” – Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.one
“Google Cloud will continue to provide its highly provisioned, low-latency infrastructure to Block.one through secure oracles, inter-chain transaction reporting, key management, and high-integrity full-node validation, Google Cloud’s confidential computing infrastructure will enhance the security, scalability, and decentralization of blockchain technology.” Dan Larimer, CTO at Block.one
It was especially great to see how proud Dan Larimer was to announce the news to Naomi Brockwell on her recent YouTube show. Dan’s body language (slightly raised eyebrow, head nod and briefly raised hands at 0:56 ) conveyed pride and confidence as he shared the news about Google Cloud’s interest in joining the EOS community.
This also brings us to another point that has been hinted at across all of these press releases: Block.one is working closely with Google Cloud on various EOSIO and public blockchain initiatives. In the Naomi Brockwell interview, Dan was very clear when explaining that Google Cloud’s interest in EOSIO flowed from work they’ve been doing with Block.one.
“We’re seeing active enterprise participation in these sorts of networks and believe Google Cloud can reduce the friction for companies to run their own Google Cloud-hosted nodes on the network. We’re also providing cloud infrastructure to Block.one as well, helping them host their own development efforts.” – Allen Day, developer advocate at Google Cloud (source)
What kind of products have they been working on? Could it be the next-generation financial services product that Brendan Blumer has hinted at recently?