Roars of celebration could be heard around the office floor of R3 as the chief architect, Richard Gendal Brown, announced the release of their newest Corda distributed ledger platform. This is a major milestone for the startup. R3 started working on Corda 1.0 two years ago and has since raised more than $100 million in capital. More than 100 consortiums contributed to the code of Corda.
Corda was initially released in 2016, with the goal to be a cheaper and simpler method for global financial firms to conduct their transactions. Since their humble beginnings, Corda has evolved to form an entirely new way with which businesses exchange value and information.
The main functionality associated with the new release is that it allows agile development without fear of glitches that may arise from changing the code. This would allow R3’s members, partners, and open-source enthusiasts to build applications more effectively.
Brown told CoinDesk:
"It will be much easier from one version to the next, and that gives developers the confidence to invest more heavily now, and the platform will still work for them as they go into production."
According to an internal document, the new update allows R3 users to create decentralized applications and client interfaces for their applications. R3 provides three core APIs that will be compatible with the older software in the new update. Privacy has also been improved, as R3 has added support for confidential identities. Additionally, the update includes a network map service that will allow for easier scaling.
Having API stability at the core of Corda will provide the users with the confidence to invest and develop applications on the platform. R3 programmers are continuously working to develop and make the code even better.
Uniqueness of Corda
While Corda may seem similar to other blockchain technologies, Corda was developed to be different as it allows its users to control the amount of information they share and with which users they share the information.
The methodology proposed by Corda is very appealing to banks, regulators, and tech companies before it even got released. This helped in the initial refinement of code. More than 11 big banks, a financial regulator in the UK, and Hewlett Packard started working with Corda. These projects helped provide R3 with the crucial feedback needed regarding its systems, which led to a more stable code.
This came as a signal to the company that it was ready to commit to freezing the core APIs and Brown explains:
"We got to the point where the abstraction, the core design kind of just crystallized into a thing that seems to be working well for a lot of other people."