The Opaque API is the latest version of the Protocol Buffers implementation for the Go programming language. The old version is now called Open Struct API. See the Go Protobuf: Releasing the Opaque API blog post for an introduction. This is a user guide for migrating Go Protobuf usages from the older Open Struct API to the new Opaque API. Warning You are looking at the manual migration guide. Typically you’re better off using the open2opaque tool to automate the migration.