Financial innovation firm R3 CEV that is leading a blockchain consortium of over 60 banks has filed for a patent on Tuesday covering software behind the new project ‘Concord’, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Project Concord is our codename for the overall vision, with Corda as our underlying distributed ledger software”, Richard G Brown, Chief Technology Officer, R3, said in a blog post.

According to R3, although Concord resembles other platforms working on blockchain technology, the underlying software Corda has enough “unique” features to justify a patent. The firm first introduced Corda, a distributed ledger platform for financial services, in April.

Concord aims to serve as a universal platform that connects bank operation within a firm as well as across rival firms. It seeks to digitize and speed up the middle- and back-office functions like clearing and settling securities trades, registering a variety of assets and keeping track of cash balances and could substantially lower the operation costs for banks. Unlike bitcoin’s architecture, Concord doesn’t have a coin.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time when there’s been so much pressure on banks,” saidDavid Rutter, R3’s founder and chief executive, adding that “it’s been difficult if not impossible for these big banks to cut costs in a significant way.”

R3 executives told the media house that a version of Concord is expected to be launched in the next several months, with a small number of banks using it to test some services early in 2017. It hopes to launch an “alpha” version by midyear.

“We need to make this real to business users in 2017,” said Todd McDonald, R3 co-founder and chief operating officer.

Corda Non-Technical Whitepaper

R3 on Wednesday released its first whitepaper on Corda: an introductory, non-technical overview that explains its vision, some design choices and outlines the key concepts underpinning the platform.

“Corda is specialized for use with regulated financial institutions. It is heavily inspired by blockchain systems, but without the design choices that make traditional blockchains inappropriate for many financial scenarios”, the whitepaper reads.

Mainly intended for the general reader, the paper introduces the design features of the Corda platform, which according to R3, makes it an attractive choice for regulated financial institutions. A forthcoming technical white paper will elaborate on the design and fundamental architectural decisions.