The Open Markets Initiative (OMI) has generated millions of lines of Lua dissector code for hundreds of binary electronic-trading protocols. This talk explains how we model binary protocols and why binary protocols form their own field of computer science. We will look at real exchange protocols covering how we go from a messy pdf spec to a Wireshark dissector. The session traces the evolution of code generation from early source generators to OMI’s advanced binary data modeling, showing how this shift enabled a large ecosystem of accurate, production-grade dissectors maintained through crowdsourcing. Along the way, we’ll examine what makes a scalable binary dissector, why protocol-driven development changes the rules, and how Wireshark helped form the OMI.