Near Foundation has announced a new partnership between Google Cloud and Near Protocol, providing infrastructure for Near’s Web3 startup platform, Pagoda.

According to an Oct. 4 announcement, this partnership will allow Google Cloud to provide “technical support” to Near grant recipients by providing infrastructure for Near’s Remote Procedure Call node provider to Pagoda.

Near Protocol is a decentralized application (DApp) platform that focuses on usability among developers and users. It utilizes sharding technology to achieve scalability and, as a competitor to Ethereum, is also smart-contract capable and a proof-of-stake blockchain.

Launched in February 2022, Pagoda is a startup platform that provides Web3 developers building on Near with a full-stack toolset to construct, launch and maintain their Web3 projects or DApps on the blockchain.

In a statement, Google Cloud director of digital assets Carlos Arena said his company's infrastructure will allow Near developers a means to “build and scale,” and said the company will continue to support “new products and services on blockchain-based platforms.”

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In September, Google Cloud inked a similar partnership with Binance’s smart contract blockchain platform BNB Chain, allowing startups that are building products and services on the BNB Chain blockchain to also be able to build on Google Cloud’s scalable, secure and open-source infrastructure.

Google Cloud launched a new digital assets team in January to support the development and evolution of the blockchain ecosystem. The digital asset team is focused on helping Google Cloud’s customers create, trade store value and launch new products on