When we launched the Corda 4 series, our vision was to deliver the most resilient, enterprise-grade distributed ledger technology platform on the market. In the last two years, we have delivered on our promise that, with Corda, businesses transacting with each other are assured that “what I see, is what you see” without the need to trust each other.

Over the nine subsequent releases, Corda has been battle-tested in hundreds of enterprise scenarios. Because of this proof in production with our customers and business networks around the world, we are delighted to announce that Corda Enterprise 4.8 is R3’s first Long Term Support (LTS) release. The LTS release emphasizes the functional maturity, longevity and stability of the platform today.

Long Term Support

LTS is a release status reserved for mature software versions. Corda Enterprise 4.8 now includes 30-months of support, complete with patches, and bug and security fixes. LTS extends our previous support period by six months, giving Corda Enterprise users the assurance of a long-term supported platform to build and deploy new applications, and the time to plan for future platform upgrades.

New features in Corda Enterprise 4.8

New notary metrics to monitor performance and improve accuracy

It is critical for users to understand the elapsed time between the notary request and response. Users can now measure elapsed time with new notary metrics, providing insights such as how long a request has spent in queue.

Further enhancements also eliminate the presentation of stale information in notary metrics, ensuring duration-based analysis captures all data points over a specified time window rather than just from a sample—benefiting node metrics too.

Broader support for dependent components:

• Users can now authenticate with Azure Key Vault using Azure Managed Identities—making identity management simpler and eliminating the need to manage credentials/certificates
• We have expanded our list of supported confidential identity keys to include Gemalto and Utimaco. For the full list of supported confidential identity keys visit the Corda doc site
• Support for Oracle Database 19c provides an extended support window for developers

A Corda 4 series recap

So, how did we arrive at our LTS version? By relentlessly delivering new code, quarter by quarter, against our roadmap.

In 2019, we started with new architectural enhancements that delivered a 100% increase in transactions per second. We also introduced mission-critical features for large-scale enterprise deployments such as Hardware Security Module support.

Later in the year, we introduced Token SDK and Accounts. Token SDK created a new standard for enterprise tokens with its highly flexible toolkit, rich API and flexibility to support fixed or evolvable token types. Since its introduction in Summer 2019, Corda’s tokenization capabilities have been used by many of our innovative customers, from Wells Fargo and Six Digital Exchange to VALK and Lab577.

Accounts introduced a fundamental shift in how businesses interact with Corda. The feature enabled Business Network Operators (BNO) to create multiple accounts, each with their own identity, on one node. The ability to partition nodes allowed BNOs to replicate complex organization entities while simultaneously lowering the barrier to entry and reducing operational costs.

Our 2020 releases focused on enhancing the developer experience, simplifying deployment, and continuing to meet our enterprise promise of high performance and security. We started by fine-tuning performance, specifically focused on reducing transaction latency, to support complex multi-party transactions where speed is critical to reducing settlement risks.

We then focused on our commitment to ledger resilience, market-leading intercompany workflow, and deployment–introducing an all-new flow framework API, ledger recovery capabilities, and more scalable deployments with Docker images and cloud templates. Flow framework enhancements also delivered more analytical capabilities, and we introduced new network permissioning capabilities directly from Corda. We concluded the year with the introduction of our first Corda Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Node and Network management and advanced ledger management capabilities.

The result has been the large-scale production of transformational business networks, such as SPUNTA, B3i, Contour, TradeIX and many more!

Looking ahead: new development accelerators for Corda Enterprise

To accelerate time to value for new applications built on the Corda platform in key industries, we are in the process of delivering a suite of software development kits and application accelerators that will be compatible with Corda Enterprise 4.8. In 2021 you will see new toolkits emerge to support faster time to value for new solutions across international trade, payments, digital currency and capital markets.

Corda eBL

Now available to Corda Enterprise customers in Public Preview, Corda eBL will be the first such CorDapp accelerator in 2021. Based on an IGP&I Club approved legal framework, it will enable firms to easily build decentralized solutions to issue, transfer and surrender electronic Bills of Lading (eBLs) across trade networks, and on Corda Network. Learn more and register your interest in the Public Preview here.

Download now

Trial Corda Enterprise 4.8 by creating your Customer Hub profile here.

Existing customer? Download our latest software at the R3 Customer Hub.

Want to learn more about building scalable, private and secure multi-party applications on Corda? Be sure to visit corda.net, check out our community page to learn how to connect with other Corda developers, and sign up for our newsletters.