I don&#x27;t think either CockroachDB or Percolator is claiming any novelty for this basic approach. The Percolator article cites another paper from 1981 that discusses essentially the same idea. (I think it&#x27;s the same, at least -- the writing is pretty terse, and I&#x27;ve only skimmed it so far.)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.berkeley.edu&#x2F;~brewer&#x2F;cs262&#x2F;concurrency-distributed-databases.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.berkeley.edu&#x2F;~brewer&#x2F;cs262&#x2F;concurrency-distrib...</a><p>Many of the general principles for this kind of distributed database have been known for decades; the key to making it practical is in the details.