We believe that while ION is similar in encoding to other formats, it is different in aspects that make ION a better all-round data and network message format.

We believe that while ION is similar in encoding to other formats, it is different in aspects that make ION a better all-round data and network message format. See our ION vs.Other Data Formats Page too. http://tutorials.jenkov.com/iap/ion-vs-other-formats.html http://tutorials.jenkov.com/iap/ion-vs-other-formats.html Not every innovation is from scratch, or 100% unique. MessagePack was designed as a binary encoding of JSON. CBOR too. ION was designed to be a binary general purpose data format able to mimic both JSON, XML, CSV and raw bytes (files), plus the most commonly used data types. Of course there will be similarities when we try to tackle the same problems, but we also believe we had added something new and useful to the mix.