EOSIO Version 1.4.0 Released

Recently, Block.one has released the latest version of EOSIO - EOSIO V1.4.0. With many additional features and fixes, and performance improvements, a major update to the EOSIO.CDT has also been addressed in the new release.
 
Major highlights of the EOSIO V1.4.0 are:
 
Deterministic Snapshots (#5956) - 1.4.0 is released with the ability to create Snapshots and use them when starting a new node, to enable users to get up and running with EOSIO in just a few minutes." Downloading a snapshot of the blockchain offers a verifiable path to having a version of the blockchain from last week or even a few hours ago."
 
Additionally, a deterministic integrity hash has also been introduced to verify that two nodes have exactly the same state, allowing you to verify new nodes as simple as fetching a string from a trusted public node and comparing it to the local copy and works whether you use snapshots or not.
 
Performance Improvements - In the earlier version EOSIO V1.3 release, wabt- a toolset for WebAssembly to replace the existing binaryen interpreter was introduced. Block producers, after implementation has observed significant performance increases. Results revealed 50% fewer CPU resources to run the main EOSIO public blockchain.
 
Kernel Timer-Based Checktime (#5799) - How contract execution time is monitored by nodeos has also been optimized. A timer functionality is added that notifies nodeos it is time to interrupt contract execution. A performance increase of over 10% has been noted. While on certain cloud server configurations the improvement is even higher.
 
EOSIO.CDT Update - Now in the new version EOSIO.CDT will provide support for EOSIO smart contract development, utilizing Gnu & C++ 11 style attributes to mark C++ contracts for ABI generation, creating a more flexible and reliable way of declaring your smart contract structure and associated data structures.
 
With the new version, EOSIO now supports a binary distributable of cleos keosd and nodeos.
 
To read the full list of issues and updates, you can visit the Official Release Notes. To read the full announcement visit here.