Yes, "submessages"in Protobuf have the same field serialisation as strings The field bytes dont really encode tag and type, they encode tag and size (fixed 32b

Yes, "submessages"in Protobuf have the same field serialisation as strings The field bytes dont really encode tag and type, they encode tag and size (fixed 32bit, 64bit or variable length) Protobuf is a TLV format. In that regard, it's not unique at all.