Zap
ZAP Protocol
Zero-copy Application Protocol for high-performance messaging
ZAP (Zero-copy Application Protocol) is a high-performance binary protocol for inter-process messaging on the Lux network. It provides 17x faster serialization and 11x less memory than MCP JSON-RPC while maintaining compatibility with existing MCP tools.
import "github.com/luxfi/zap"Performance
| Metric | MCP JSON-RPC | ZAP | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Serialization | 5,579 ns/op | 322 ns/op | 17x faster |
| Memory/call | 2,826 bytes | 256 bytes | 11x less |
| Allocations | 58/op | 2/op | 29x fewer |
| Parse time | ~1,000 ns | 2.9 ns | 345x faster |
Wire Format
Every ZAP message has a 16-byte header followed by a variable-length data segment:
Header (16 bytes)
Magic: "ZAP\x00" (4 bytes)
Version: 1 (2 bytes)
Flags: compression, etc. (2 bytes)
Root Offset: offset to root object (4 bytes)
Size: total message size (4 bytes)
Data Segment (variable)
Structs, lists, text, bytes...Supported Types
| Type | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Bool | 1 | Boolean (0 or 1) |
| Int8/Uint8 | 1 | 8-bit integer |
| Int16/Uint16 | 2 | 16-bit integer |
| Int32/Uint32 | 4 | 32-bit integer |
| Int64/Uint64 | 8 | 64-bit integer |
| Float32/Float64 | 4/8 | IEEE 754 floating point |
| Text | 8 | String (offset + length) |
| Bytes | 8 | Byte slice (offset + length) |
| List | 8 | Array (offset + length) |
| Struct | 4 | Nested object (offset) |
| Address | 20 | EVM address |
| Hash | 32 | EVM hash |
| Signature | 65 | EVM signature |
TLS Support
ZAP supports optional TLS via NodeConfig.TLS. When running on Go 1.26+, TLS connections default to PQ-TLS 1.3 with ML-KEM-768 + X25519 hybrid key exchange -- no additional configuration required.
node := zap.NewNode(zap.NodeConfig{
NodeID: "node-1",
ServiceType: "_luxd._tcp",
Port: 9651,
TLS: tlsConfig, // *tls.Config; Go 1.26 defaults to ML-KEM-768
})Zero-copy semantics are preserved under TLS. The TLS layer operates on the same buffer without additional heap allocations.
Use Cases
- AI Agent Orchestration: 20-tool orchestrator runs at 150K ops/sec vs 10K with JSON-RPC
- VM-to-VM Communication: Cross-VM message routing on the Lux network
- GPU Cluster / FHE Kernels: Zero-copy ciphertext transfer between compute nodes
- Consensus: 5-node consensus reaching agreement in ~450 microseconds
- MCP Bridge: Auto-discover and accelerate existing MCP servers with ZAP transport