Proxies are a powerful architectural pattern commonly used in other application-layer protocols like HTTP, but they remain underutilized in the Kafka ecosystem. Kroxylicious is a groundbreaking, early-stage project that aims to change this by making it easier to develop Kafka proxies with minimal effort. While some organizations have built their own Kafka-aware proxies to address specific challenges, these solutions often remain closed-source and highly specialized. Kroxylicious tackles this problem by offering a set of pre-built capabilities and common features out-of-the-box, enabling developers to concentrate on the custom logic their applications need. In this session, I will introduce Kroxylicious, highlight its potential use cases, and demonstrate how it can simplify Kafka proxy development, reduce complexity, and unlock new possibilities for real-time data processing.