Dapper Labs Taps Google to Help Scale FLOW

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Google has teamed up with Dapper Labs in a multi-year partnership deal. Dapper Labs will utilize Google Cloud to help support and scale the FLOW blockchain, which hosts many of the company’s leading creations.

Google Cloud Backs Dapper Labs

Dapper Labs, the company behind the hit NFT collectibles NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties, has signed a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud, Forbes reported Tuesday. 

The deal will focus on supporting and scaling Dapper Lab’s in-house FLOW blockchain using Google Cloud’s network infrastructure. FLOW is already home to established NFT projects such as NBA Top Shot, which has recorded over $680 million in trading volume since it launched last October. 

Google will host FLOW nodes using its cloud services, making development on the blockchain easier. Additionally, Google appears receptive to concerns over the energy usage of cryptocurrencies. Janet Kennedy, Google Cloud North America’s vice president, has stated that developers will be able to choose the regions that power their applications based on the energy consumption of that region. 

Commenting on the partnership with Dapper Labs, Kennedy said:

“Blockchain technology is becoming more and more mainstream. So companies like Dapper need scalable, secure infrastructure to grow their business, and even more importantly, support their networks.”

While Google is now enthusiastic about offering its services to support cryptocurrencies, it is somewhat late to the party. Microsoft was the first big company to start offering its cloud infrastructure to blockchains in 2015, with Amazon also launching a similar service in 2019. However, in February, Google confirmed it was using its cloud service to run a node for the enterprise-grade distributed ledger Hedera Hashgraph, along with joining the project’s council, marking a big step for the company’s involvement in crypto technology. 

Despite the late start, Google has not shied away from offering its products in the crypto space. Earlier this year, the company announced the integration of its BigQuery data analytics platform with Polygon, providing useful metrics for analysis such as the most active and popular tokens, contracts, and apps on the network. Since then, Google has also integrated with Chainlink, allowing data from outside sources to be used in applications built directly on the blockchain. 

Following the success of NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs is looking to expand its sport-based NFT collectibles with the help of Google’s cloud services. The company is currently building a similar NFT platform to NBA Top Shot for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, offering mixed martial arts fans limited collectibles through FLOW.

Disclaimer: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies. 

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