Fireblocks and Google seek to offer secure cloud services for the development of infrastructures and services prepared for the management of digital assets, tokens and cryptocurrencies, in the safest way possible.
Digital asset platform Fireblocks has announced a collaboration with Google Cloud to explore new innovative solutions in the field of crypto custody. This alliance, which integrates Google’s Confidential Space technology, will allow even highly regulated financial companies to manage their private keys securely. This development marks an important milestone in the expansion of the crypto sector within the traditional fintech world. Below, we explain all the details of this collaboration.
Fireblocks and Google Cloud simplify digital asset custody
Fireblocks, an enterprise-grade platform known for providing secure infrastructure for digital assets, has announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud. This union integrates the service Google Cloud Confidential Space, dedicated to protecting sensitive data for businesses and individuals. It is an isolated environment that offers privacy to its users, with applications in personal identification, health information, intellectual property, machine learning and much more.
Fireblocks will use this technology to ensure secure and simplified management of private keys. In this way, the platform mitigates the risks associated with the custody of digital assets by highly regulated fintech companies. This news highlights Fireblocks’ ongoing commitment to meeting the privacy and security demands of its institutional clients.
Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder of Fireblocks, has publicly explained the advantages of this alliance with the cloud computing giant: “Thanks to the integration with Google Cloud Confidential Space, we can offer our customers the ability to perform critical operations with digital assets in a highly secure and scalable environment.”
Driving the adoption of digital assets in financial companies
The collaboration between Fireblocks and Google Cloud opens up new opportunities in highly regulated industries looking to tap into the resources of digital assets. Companies that manage sensitive financial data can leverage the new service to execute secure transactions while meeting strict regulatory and compliance standards. By incorporating Google Cloud’s Confidential Space Virtual Machine (VM) and other assurance services, Fireblocks enhances its customers’ ability to prevent unauthorized access.
These features ensure that only certain individuals can interact with digital asset data, maintaining a cryptographic custodial approach. Importantly, Google Cloud Confidential Space uses Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology to fragment access keys. No individual, not even Fireblocks, can access the full private key without assistance from all parties involved in management. This significantly reduces the risk of compromise or a single point of failure, providing advanced protection for digital asset-related operations.
Rene Kolga, Senior Product Manager at Google Cloud, reiterated the benefits of software integration: “Confidential Space, with its strong security guarantees and ease of use, has been widely adopted by the Web3 industry. We are excited to see this integration with Fireblocks that will benefit our mutual customers.”
Private keys and access barriers in the Web3 world
Managing private keys for digital assets has always been a challenging topic, especially for regulated financial firms. Fintech companies with strict regulatory obligations often have to ensure that the infrastructure providers they connect with meet robust security standards. In a context as complex and full of dangers as that of cryptocurrencies, autonomous management of one's own assets is essential. However, to act in this direction, the companies themselves must have the appropriate skills and infrastructure to implement self-custody.
It is not enough to act as individual investors and keep access keys “in the drawer” without any guarantee in case of theft or natural disasters. Thanks to Google Cloud’s Confidential Space and MPC technology, these companies can mitigate the risk of data breaches. At the same time, they break down the barriers to access to this challenging sector. Splitting private keys between multiple separate entities strikes the right balance between secure management and efficient interaction in the Web3 world. Fireblocks’ presence as an infrastructure partner provides an incentive to stock exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks and hedge funds that wish to get involved in this sector.
Google Cloud and its numerous collaborations in the blockchain industry
This is not the first time that Google Cloud has entered the field of digital assets to offer its software support. Back in February 2018, it began offering various public data sets on BigQuery Marketplace, including full transaction data for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and other cryptocurrencies. In August 2021, he collaborated with the project chainlink to unlock access to digital asset data through blockchain oracle technology. In the same year, Google Cloud formed a partnership with Dapper labs to improve the scalability of the NFT sector by implementing a dedicated node.
In early 2022, Google created a dedicated team to research digital assets to take advantage of the constant growth trend of the crypto sector. In March 2023, it introduced the Blockchain Node Engine, a fully managed node hosting service for Web3 development. This tool allows developers to set up fully managed Ethereum nodes with secure access to the L1 blockchain.
Looking ahead, Google Cloud is exploring future opportunities to enable customers to make and receive payments using cryptocurrencies. The new collaboration with Fireblocks could open the door to a wave of applications for the issuance, management and settlement of the increasingly popular digital assets.
