[hellofunk]

According to the GRPC website, the technology is completely tied to protocol buffers? Seems like an odd and specific dependency to have for something like that: https://grpc.io/

[mhaberl]

Not really. Take a look here: https://grpc.io/blog/grpc-with-json/

[psanford]

GRPC does not require you use a specific serialization format. However in practice just about everyone uses protobufs simply because it is well integrated for all languages.