Californian FinTech firm Ripple Labs has been awarded a patent in the U.S. for an invention by Stefan Thomas (currently, CEO of Coil) and Evan Schwartz (co-inventor of the Interledger Protocol; currently a board member at Coil).

The application (No. 15/873,737) for this patent (No. 10,789,068), which has the title “System and method for verifying sequence of instructions of software”, was filed by Thomas and Schwartz on 17 January 2018; this was a continuation of an application (No. 14/733,232) the two former Ripple engineers filed on 8 June 2015.

This patent was awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce, on 29 September 2020.

Here is the abstract:

“In a method for executing software, a result produced from an execution of a copy of the software by a corresponding platform can be received from each of a plurality of platforms.

“A number of results of execution of the software can be determined. The extent to which the results match can be compared to a threshold.

“The matching results can be accepted as an agreed-upon output of the software when the extent to which the results match is equal to or greater than the threshold.

“The software can include an implementation of at least a portion of an act associated with an agreement between at least two entities.”