The government of Austria is prepared to utilize the Ethereum (ETH) public blockchain to distribute €1.15 billion ($1.35 billion) of government bonds in an auction that will be done next week.

This is according to local news outlet Kleine Zeitung.

Oesterreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB) — which is considered to be one of Austria’s largest banks with $26 billion in assets in 2017 — would conduct the live blockchain notarization service. During the auction, slated for October 2, the bank would release the bonds on behalf of the Austrian Treasury (OeBFA).

Austria’s Finance Minister, Hartwig Löger, said that the ministry believes blockchain tech “forms a focus on economic policy,” saying:

“Through setting up the FinTech Advisory Council at the Ministry of Finance, we are developing strategies enabling Austria to benefit optimally from these developments.”

OeKB remarked that this would be the first time a blockchain-based notarization service would be employed as part of a Federal Bond Auction in Austria. The process, would draw on a system that has been worked on internally by the bank to “notarize data from Austria’s established system — the Austrian Direct Auction System (ADAS) — “as hash values on the Ethereum public blockchain.”

The use of blockchain in this situation does not go as far as releasing tokenized bonds that would operate in parallel to current paper or digital systems. However, as Markus Stix, managing director at the Austrian Treasury, said, the use of the technology has important benefits for both security and cost reduction:

“This added security contributes to achieving a high level of confidence in the auction process for Austrian government bonds and strengthens Austria’s good standing in the market, which indirectly also has the capacity to contribute to favourable financing costs.”