diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index b8d183f73..e391a42ba 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -7,6 +7,6 @@ verify:
 	@echo Running the spec phrase checker:
 	@tools/verify-specs.sh -v spec.md documented-extensions.md json-format.md \
 		http-transport-binding.md http-webhook.md mqtt-transport-binding.md \
-		nats-transport-binding.md
+		nats-transport-binding.md protobuf-format.md
 	@echo Running the doc phrase checker:
 	@tools/verify-docs.sh -v .
diff --git a/cloudevent.proto b/cloudevent.proto
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7e406c702
--- /dev/null
+++ b/cloudevent.proto
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+syntax = "proto3";
+
+package io.cloudevents;
+
+// allows a map to appear inside `oneof`
+message CloudEventMap {
+  map<string, CloudEventAny> value = 1;
+}
+
+message CloudEventAny {
+  oneof value {
+    string string_value = 1;
+    bytes binary_value = 2;
+    uint32 int_value = 3;
+    CloudEventMap map_value = 4;
+  }
+}
diff --git a/protobuf-format.md b/protobuf-format.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..cc0d65d7e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/protobuf-format.md
@@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
+# Protocol Buffers Event Format for CloudEvents  - Version 0.1
+
+## Abstract
+
+The Protocol Buffers Format for CloudEvents (CE) defines the encoding
+of CloudEvents in the Protocol Buffers binary format.
+
+## Status of this document
+
+This document is a working draft.
+
+## 1. Introduction
+
+This specification defines how the [Context
+Attributes](spec.md#context-attributes) defined in the CloudEvents
+specification MUST be encoded in the protocol buffer binary
+format. Transcoding to and from other formats (e.g. JSON) is out of
+the scope of this document.
+
+Protocol Buffers are a language-neutral, platform-neutral extensible
+mechanism for serializing structured data. The [Google reference
+implementation of Protocol
+Buffers](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf) includes support
+for an interface descriptor language (IDL), and this document makes
+use of language level 3 IDL from Protocol Buffers v3.5.0. CloudEvents
+systems using Protocol Buffers are not mandated to use the IDL or any
+particular implementation of Protocol Buffers as long as they produce
+messages which match the binary encoding defined by the IDL.
+
+
+### 1.1. Conformance
+The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
+"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
+document are to be interpreted as described in
+[RFC2119](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119).
+
+## 2. Protocol Buffers format
+
+Protocol Buffers provide a binary data serialization format which is
+substantially more compact and efficient to parse when compared to XML
+or JSON, along with a variety of language-specific libraries to
+perform automatic serialization and deserialization. The [Protocol
+Buffers specification defines a well-known encoding
+format](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/encoding)
+which is the basis of this specification. This specification is
+described using the Protocol Buffers project IDL for readability, but
+the ultimate basis of this specification is the Protocol Buffers
+binary encoding.
+
+
+### 2.1 Definition
+
+Users of Protocol Buffers MUST use a message whose binary encoding is
+identical to the one described by the [CloudEventMap
+message](./cloudevent.proto):
+
+```proto
+syntax = "proto3";
+
+package io.cloudevents;
+
+// allows a map to appear inside `oneof`
+message CloudEventMap {
+  map<string, CloudEventAny> value = 1;
+}
+
+message CloudEventAny {
+  oneof value {
+    string string_value = 1;
+    bytes binary_value = 2;
+    uint32 int_value = 3;
+    CloudEventMap map_value = 4;
+  }
+}
+```
+
+The CloudEvents type system MUST be mapped into the fields of
+`CloudEventAny` as follows:
+
+
+| CloudEvents  | CloudEventAny field
+|--------------|-------------------------------------------------------------
+| String       | string_value
+| Binary       | binary_value
+| URI          | string_value (string expression conforming to URI-reference as defined in [RFC 3986 §4.1](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-4.1))
+| Timestamp    | string_value (string expression as defined in [RFC 3339](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339))
+| Map          | map_value
+| Integer      | int_value
+| Any          | Not applicable. Any is the enclosing CloudEventAny message itself
+
+
+## 3. Examples
+
+Below is an example of how to create a CloudEvent Protocol Buffer
+message using the Java Google Protocol Buffers library:
+
+```java
+import com.google.common.base.Charsets;
+import com.google.protobuf.ByteString;
+
+
+CloudEventMap event = CloudEventMap.newBuilder()
+  .putValue(
+    "eventType",
+    CloudEventAny.newBuilder()
+      .setStringValue("com.example.emitter.event")
+      .build())
+  .putValue(
+    "cloudEventsVersion",
+    CloudEventAny.newBuilder()
+      .setStringValue("0.1")
+      .build())
+  .putValue(
+    "eventTime",
+    CloudEventAny.newBuilder()
+      .setStringValue("2018-10-25T00:00:00+00:00")
+      .build())
+  .putValue(
+    "source",
+    CloudEventAny.newBuilder()
+      .setStringValue("com.example.source.host1")
+      .build())
+  .putValue(
+    "comExampleCustomextension",
+    CloudEventAny.newBuilder()
+      .setStringValue("some value for the extension")
+      .build())
+  .putValue(
+    "data",
+    CloudEventAny.newBuilder()
+      .setBinaryValue(ByteString.copyFrom("a binary string", Charsets.UTF_8))
+      .build())
+  .build();
+```