VSR makes a lot of sense for their problem space: fixed schema, deterministic state machine, and a very tight control over replication + execution order.

Ayder has a different set of constraints: - append-only logs with streaming semantics - dynamic topics / partitions - external clients producing arbitrary payloads over HTTP

Raft here is a pragmatic choice: it’s well understood, easier to reason about for operators, and fits the “easy to try, easy to operate” goal of the system.

That said, I think VSR is a great example of what’s possible when you fully own the problem and can specialize aggressively. Definitely a project I’ve learned from.