Compact resettable counters through causal stability

Abstract

Conflict-free Data Types (CRDTs) were designed to automatically resolve conflicts in eventually consistent systems. Different CRDTs were designed in both operation-based and state-based flavors such as Counters, Sets, Registers, Maps, etc. In a previous paper [2], Baquero et al. presented the problem with embedded CRDT counters and a solution, covering state-based counters that can be embedded in maps, but needing an ad-hoc extension to the standard counter API. Here, we present a resettable operation-based counter design, with the standard simple API and small state, through a causalstability- based state compaction.