Nodes in a Corda network operated under a trust-less model and run by different organizations. Nodes run as part of an authenticated peer-to-peer network. Nodes communicate directly with each other using the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), which is an approved international standard (ISO/IEC 19464) and ensures that messages across different nodes are transferred safely and securely. AMQP works over Transport Layer Security (TLS) in Corda, thus ensuring privacy and integrity of data communicated between nodes.

Nodes also make use of a local relational database for storage. Messages on the network are encoded in a compact binary format. They are delivered and managed by using the Apache Artemis message broker (Active MQ). A node can serve as a network map service, notary, Oracle, or a regular node. The following diagram shows a high-level view of two nodes communicating with each other:

In the preceding diagram, Node 1 is communicating with Node 2 over a TLS communication channel using the AMQP protocol, and the nodes have a local relational database for storage.