Episode 105 of The Technical Co-Founder Podcast dives into the world of conflict-free replicated data types, or CRDTs. Lucas and Luna explore how a startup called Pixelboard built a real-time collaborative whiteboard that works seamlessly offline, then syncs when connectivity returns. The episode focuses on their specific engineering choices: why they chose an RGA-based list CRDT for drawing strokes, how they handle undo across peers, and the trade-off between causal delivery and performance. Lucas explains why CRDTs beat Operational Transform for this use case, citing data transfer of just 2.4 KB per stroke even with hundreds of collaborators. The hosts also touch on the operational complexity of garbage-collecting tombstones in an append-only log. This is a concrete case study for any engineering leader evaluating offline-first architecture.

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