Conflict-free Replicated Data Types

This academic paper introduces Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs), which are abstract data types designed for distributed systems where data is replicated across multiple locations. CRDTs allow any replica to be modified without needing immediate coordination with other replicas, ensuring high availability and low latency. The core concept is that CRDTs employ mathematically sound rules and specific concurrency semantics (like add-wins or last-writer-wins) to guarantee that replicas converge to the same state when they have received the same updates, even if updates occur…