PBJ - Protocol Buffers is an advanced alternative to Google’s Protocol Buffers, offering a code generator, parser, and library specifically designed for Java. It focuses on three main objectives: creating Java Record Objects from proto files with a clean API, optimizing for performance to match or exceed Google’s ProtoC-generated code, and minimizing garbage generation to reduce Java object overhead. Balancing these goals, PBJ seeks the optimal blend of code quality and performance efficiency. The project is used by the Consensus Node to model the Hashgraph API (HAPI), the generated blockchain, and the merkle tree state for Consensus Nodes. It is generally useful for any Java project that needs to parse protobuf.