[mweidner]

Even in the absence of a central server, you can still avoid CRDT/OT complexity if you have a decentralized way to eventually total order operations & apply them in that order: https://mattweidner.com/2025/05/21/text-without-crdts.html#d...

As others in the comments argue, this is technically a CRDT (though a fully general one); also, undoing/replaying ops is itself non-trivial to implement. However, I hope this is still simpler than using a traditional CRDT/OT for each data type.

[math_dandy]

Did you perhaps mean to write, “though not a fully general one”?

[mweidner]

A decentralized, eventually consistent total order on operations is a fully general CRDT, in the sense that you can put whatever (deterministic) operations you want in the total order and clients will end up in eventually consistent states.

Whether the converged result is at all reasonable is a different question.

[math_dandy]

Ok, now I understand your reply. In retrospect, you were being perfectly clear all along and my confusion was due to me not appreciating the precise definition of a CRDT. Thanks!