sync error: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'protocol')

[frankhinek]

Multiple people have reported receiving the following error:

sync error: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'protocol')

The following steps were provided on Discord:

Scenario:

• 2 index.html files running in different browsers
• both point to the same dwn-server running on localhost
• each index has simple html buttons to perform
• connect, create, read, update, send and an input text box to paste each others did into for the send call

1 for alice.html
1 for bob.html

alice -> web5.connect()
bob -> web5.connect()

alice -> configured the same protocol - a basic anyone all options (read, write, update, delete)
alice -> creates a 'hello bob' text record
alice -> record.send(bobs:did)

bob -> configured the same protocol - a basic anyone all options (read, write, update, delete)
bob -> queries records until it shows up
bob -> await record.data.text()
bob -> record.update({data: "hello alice" })
bob -> record.send(alices:did)

this works the record is sent to both and updated as expected but then ...
a couple minutes or so - the error starts showing up on both in the inspect console
protocol

    let protocolDefinition = {
      'protocol': 'https://message.app/protocol',
      'published': true,
      'types': {
        'message': {
          'schema': 'https://schema.org/message',
          'dataFormats': ['text/plain']
        }
      },
      'structure': {
        'message': {
          "$actions": [
            {
              "who": "anyone",
              "can": "write"
            },
            {
              "who": "anyone",
              "can": "delete"
            },
            {
              "who": "anyone",
              "can": "read"
            },
            {
              "who": "anyone",
              "can": "update"
            }    
          ]
        }
      }
    }

and after the error shows the syncing stops working

what the error looks like:

its intermittent -- this time it took about 10+ mins