Looks like you cross-posted this comment here and on my blog, so I'll also cross-post in my response. I am quite confused by your statement that YugaByte does

Looks like you cross-posted this comment here and on my blog, so I'll also cross-post in my response. I am quite confused by your statement that YugaByte does not claim linearizability. The C of CAP is linearizability (see the original CAP theorem https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~adrian/731-sp04/readings/GL-cap.pdf https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~adrian/731-sp04/readings/GL-cap.p...). By claiming to be CP from CAP, you are claiming linearizability. CockroachDB also makes the same CP claim. However, they explicitly walk back from this claim (https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/living-without-atomic-clocks/ https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/living-without-atomic-clo...). In contrast, YugaByte documentation makes no effort to walk back from this claim. Rather, the documentation seems to indicate that YugaByte is linearizable at: https://blog.yugabyte.com/jepsen-testing-on-yugabyte-db-database/ https://blog.yugabyte.com/jepsen-testing-on-yugabyte-db-data... and https://docs.yugabyte.com/latest/develop/learn/acid-transactions/ https://docs.yugabyte.com/latest/develop/learn/acid-transact.... Also, I would encourage you to read the Herlihy-Wing paper on linearizability published in 1990. You seem to be confusing linearizability with ACID isolation levels, which are actually a different concept. Peter Bailis has a good blog post on the difference: http://www.bailis.org/blog/linearizability-versus-serializability/ http://www.bailis.org/blog/linearizability-versus-serializab.... On your third point, we agree. However, the point of my post is that relying on max clock skew without hardware support is dangerous. I’m going so far as to say that it’s so dangerous that it is incorrect to claim consistency guarantees when you make such assumptions. I would really encourage YugaByte to consider using global consensus instead of partitioned consensus. I believe you will find it much easier to support serializability (which as you said, is on your road map) and linearizability.