released it 2016 • using Protobuf (Protocol buffers/serialize) for data exchange (not json like GraphQL) • gRPC has a schema-like file, .proto, that describes the API • Stateless • Advantages: Lightweight messages, can be up to 30 percent smaller in size than JSON messages • High performance: gRPC is 8x times faster than REST+JSON communication • Support for data streaming with event-driven architectures: server-side streaming, client-side streaming, and bidirectional streaming • Google, Netflix, Dropbox, etc.