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CRDTs are actually simple — the hard part is delivery
July 18, 2026
Everyone hand-waves the CRDT math. The real complexity is the transport: exactly-once ordered delivery over an unreliable network.
The convergence math is one page. What eats the year is delivery.
The three delivery problems
- Ordering ops so tombstones outlive their causes.
- Deduplication when a client reconnects mid-batch.
- Compaction — you can't append forever.
Solve those three and the CRDT part is the easy day.