A former BlockFi executive left the company to work on Google’s Web3 initiative.

Rishi Ramchandani, who recently stepped down after two and a half years as BlockFi’s VP for Asia, is now Google’s Web3 lead for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

“Excited for the next step in my career!” he wrote on LinkedIn. “I look forward to growing Google Cloud’s #web3 efforts in APAC and working with the great people there.”

BlockFi announced last month that it would seek bankruptcy protection following its decision to pause activity on its site.

The company was a victim of the multi-billion dollar collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency platform. BlockFi suffered a solvency crisis over the summer after a drop in cryptocurrency prices rocked markets for digital assets.

Seeking bailout, BlockFi accepted a lifeline from FTX in the form of a $400 million revolving credit facility. The company reportedly used most of the credit facility to correct its balance sheet, while extending millions of dollars in loans using FTX’s now essentially worthless FTT tokens as collateral.

In announcing its bankruptcy, BlockFi said it would focus on recovering all obligations owed to it, including those owed by FTX.

PYMNTS has reported on Google’s Web3 efforts before, including the company’s October announcement that it was working with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on a project to better serve Web3 developers.

The partnership will see Coinbase use Google Cloud Computing Platform to “process blockchain data at scale and improve the global reach of its crypto services by leveraging Google’s premium fiber optic network,” as the companies said at the time.

Additionally, Coinbase will build its global data platform using Google Cloud infrastructure and leverage its data and analytics technologies to offer Coinbase clients “machine learning-powered crypto insights.”

Google Cloud will also allow some customers, starting with those in the Web3 ecosystem, to pay for their cloud services using certain cryptocurrencies. The companies said that Google will use Coinbase Prime for institutional crypto services such as secure custody and reporting.

There are some unknowns about the technology after a September report from McKinsey and Co. on Web3.

The way users and creators can gain an advantage is through “open source rather than proprietary applications” that give them “incentives to innovate, test, build and scale,” the report says.

“Which is great if you’re the technical type who knows how to use open source technology,” PYMNTS wrote. “But as $2 billion in cryptocurrency bridging programs this year alone has shown, the open source blockchain is difficult to use at the best of times.”

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