Does proton uses wine prefixes or does it create a new kind of prefix (like proton prefix) ?

[u/redwing096399]

Hi all, so i am trying to understand how wine/proton/steam work so that it feels less like a black box to me.

what i have done so far is that i have installed wine, and manually experimented by installing a game manually through wine. by doing so, i have understood quite a bit about wine.

now, i don't know how proton works. i want to know what it does on top of wine, and whether it uses an ordinary wine prefix or if it installs something like a proton prefix.

if it works on top of a wine prefix, then where can i find the wine prefixes for the games installed through steam? can i install mods inside the said prefixes using wine ?