The digital asset platform Fireblocks has just entered into a collaboration with Google Cloud to explore new innovative solutions for cryptographic self-custody.
Thanks to the integration of Confidential Space technology, even highly regulated financial companies will be able to securely manage their private keys.
This innovation creates a new precedent for the expansion of the vast cryptocurrency sector within the traditional fintech world.
All the details below.
Summary
Fireblocks and Google Cloud simplify the self-custody process of digital assets
Fireblocks, a well-known enterprise-level platform that provides a secure infrastructure for digital assets, has announced a new collaboration with Google Cloud.
The union with the software offered by Google sees the integration of the Confidential Space service, dedicated to the securing of sensitive data for companies and individuals.
We are talking about an isolated environment that offers privacy to its users, with use cases in personal identification, health information, intellectual property, machine learning and much more.
In specific, Fireblocks will leverage Google Cloud’s Confidential Space to ensure secure and simplified management of private keys.
By doing so, the platform mitigates the risks associated with the self-custody of digital assets by high-level regulated fintech companies.
This news highlights the constant commitment of the New York company to meet the privacy and security demands of institutional clients.
Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder of Fireblocks, spoke publicly to explain the advantages of the prestigious partnership with the cloud computing giant.
Here is what was stated:
“Thanks to the integration with Confidential Space by Google Cloud, we give our clients the ability to perform critical operations on digital resources in a highly secure and scalable environment.”
A huge step forward towards the adoption of digital assets in financial companies
The collaboration between Fireblocks and Google Cloud unlocks new opportunities in the highly regulated sectors that want to explore the resources of digital asset.
Various companies that manage sensitive financial data can leverage the new service to execute secure transactions while adhering to strict regulatory and compliance standards.
Incorporating the Confidential Space Virtual Machine (VM) of Google Cloud and other assurance services, Fireblocks enhances its customers’ ability to prevent unauthorized access.
These features ensure that only certain individuals can interact with the data of digital asset, maintaining a cryptographic self-custody approach.
It is worth highlighting in this regard how Confidential Space by Google Cloud leverages Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology for the fragmentation of access keys.
No one other than authorized users (not even Fireblocks itself) can access the private key in full without the assistance of all parties involved in the management.
This significantly reduces the risk of compromise or a single point of failure, providing advanced protection for operations related to digital assets.
Entering into the merits of the debate on the security of digital assets, Rene Kolga, Senior Product Manager at Google Cloud, reiterated the advantages of software integration:
“Confidential Space, with its strong security guarantees combined with ease of use, has been widely adopted by the Web3 industry. We are excited to see this integration with Fireblocks that will bring benefits to our common clients.”
Private keys and access barriers in the web3 world
The management of private keys for digital assets has always been a challenging topic to address, especially for regulated financial companies.
Very often fintech companies with strict regulatory obligations must ensure that the infrastructural providers they connect to have solid security standards.
In a context as complex and full of pitfalls as that of cryptocurrencies, it is essential to rely on autonomous management of one’s own assets.
In order to act in this direction, however, the same companies must necessarily have adequate skills and infrastructure for the implementation of self custody.
It is not enough to act as individual degen investors and keep your access keys “in cameretta” without any guarantee in case of theft or natural disasters.
Thanks to Confidential Space by Google Cloud and MPC technology, these companies can mitigate the risk of data breaches of their own data. At the same time, they break down the access barriers to this challenging sector.
Dividing the private keys among multiple separate entities achieves the right compromise between secure management and efficient interaction in the web3 world.
At the same time, the presence of Firebricks as an infrastructural partner offers an incentive to stock exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds that want to engage in this sector.
Google Cloud and the numerous collaborations in the blockchain industry
It is certainly not the first time that Google Cloud steps into the field of digital assets to offer its software support.
Already in February 2018, it began offering various public datasets on BigQuery Marketplace, including complete transaction data for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and other cryptos.
In August 2021, it collaborated with the Chainlink project to unlock access to digital asset data through the technology of blockchain oracles.
In the same year, Google Cloud formed a partnership with Dapper Labs to improve the scalability of the NFT sector through the implementation of a dedicated node.
At the dawn of 2022, the giant Google created a team dedicated to the study of digital assets in order to ride 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 to the future, Google Cloud is exploring future opportunities to enable customers to make and receive payments using cryptocurrencies.
The new collaboration with Fireblocks could open the doors to a wave of requests for the issuance, management, and settlement of the increasingly beloved digital assets.
