The reason is because this is not in fact a substitute for the clock sync service (whether that's PTP, or something that's becoming popular like Chrony). It's

The reason is because this is not in fact a substitute for the clock sync service (whether that's PTP, or something that's becoming popular like Chrony). It's complementary, a clock fault failure detector. We're not trying to synchronize clocks, merely to detect when too many clocks in the cluster no longer agree. TigerBeetle needs to detect when the network is partitioned in a way such that the clock sync service (PTP or NTP etc.) is not functioning while the TigerBeetle cluster still has a functioning majority on the other side of the partition. No matter the clock sync service you use, you still need some way to verify that the clock sync is in fact happening, which is what this is. Hope that clarifies it for you!