I didn't consider that gRPC ser/deser was somewhat expensive. Then that would also be true for the TCP case too, right? Assuming I'm sending data over plain TC

I didn't consider that gRPC ser/deser was somewhat expensive. Then that would also be true for the TCP case too, right? Assuming I'm sending data over plain TCP, would Protobuf be comparable in performance to another DB wire protocol? Or am I better off selecting a proven protocol like Postgres and using that?