Introduction: The Challenge of Distributed State Management#

Imagine you’re building a globally distributed application where users across different continents need to see consistent data think user presence status, live dashboards, or real-time collaboration features. Traditional databases force you to choose between consistency and availability, but what if there was a better way?

Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) offer a mathematical approach to distributed state management where conflicts are resolved automatically through well-defined merge operations. When combined with edge notifications, you get a powerful pattern: write anywhere, replicate everywhere, and get notified of changes in real-time.