This was also a surprise to me when we started TigerBeetle. How clock synchronization protocols can experience unaligned network partitions, where the ledger d

This was also a surprise to me when we started TigerBeetle. How clock synchronization protocols can experience unaligned network partitions, where the ledger database cluster is able to continue running, but now with the risk of unsynchronized clocks and far-future timestamps, which can in turn then lead to money being locked up in 2PC payment protocols. We therefore spent considerable effort [0] on clock synchronization in TigerBeetle, not for the consensus protocol—we never risk stale reads or take a chance with clock error bounds—but rather simply for accurate audit trails and to keep inflight liquidity from being locked up if transactions take too long to get rolled back. [0] https://tigerbeetle.com/blog/three-clocks-are-better-than-one/ https://tigerbeetle.com/blog/three-clocks-are-better-than-on...