CRDTs: The Key to Strong Eventual Consistency

CRDTs (Conflict-free Replicated Data Types) are data structures that can be replicated across multiple nodes, edited independently, and merged seamlessly. This article delves into how CRDTs achieve Strong Eventual Consistency (SEC), a more robust model than traditional eventual consistency. SEC ensures that even with independent updates across multiple nodes, conflicts are resolved automatically and deterministically, leading to low latency, high fault tolerance, and offline functionality. The author argues that CRDTs are fundamental building blocks for strongly eventually consistent systems, with applications extending far beyond collaborative editing and multiplayer to-do lists, into distributed databases and beyond.