Kong has reached a significant milestone with the release of Kong 1.0, marking the maturity of this open-source project, which has been widely adopted by large companies and government agencies worldwide. Originally launched nearly four years ago as Kong Community Edition (CE), it has now been renamed simply as Kong, while its counterpart, Kong Enterprise Edition (EE), will be known as Kong Enterprise. This update introduces major features including Service Mesh support, enabling mutual TLS between Kong instances, and a new Database Abstraction Object (DAO) that simplifies database migrations with minimal downtime. The release signifies that Kong's API is stable, backward-compatible, and ready for future advancements, emphasizing its readiness for production environments. Additionally, popular enhancements such as route naming and HTTPS health checks have been added. The release is celebrated as a stepping stone towards future platform innovation, supported by the community and users who continuously test Kong's capabilities.