The version was a significant release that brought support for PHP 7.4 , a version notable for its performance improvements and the introduction of typed properties.

: To run these files, a server must have the ionCube Loader installed, which decrypts and executes the bytecode at runtime. Features of IC11.x and PHP 7.4 Decoding

: The code is compiled into opcodes, eliminating the original source text.

How to Decode ionCube encrypted files? [closed] - Stack Overflow

: Identifiers like classes and functions are mangled to make reverse engineering more difficult.