Kong 1.3 introduces several new features and improvements, including native support for gRPC proxying, upstream mutual TLS authentication, and enhancements such as the open-source release of the Sessions Plugin and fixes for NGINX vulnerabilities. The update aims to provide better control, security, and performance for microservices architectures, offering capabilities like A/B testing, automatic retries, and circuit breaking for gRPC services. The release also includes an upgraded version of OpenResty, which contributes to a 10% increase in performance, and enhanced routing capabilities that allow matching routes by any request header and implementing least-connections load balancing. Other notable additions are the ability to export database configurations to YAML files for easier backup and version control, as well as improvements in handling upstream keepalive connections to reduce errors. The Kong team encourages users to explore the new features, consult detailed documentation, and participate in community discussions to optimize the use of Kong 1.3.