Ok, so the main point that makes it different from CRDTs seems to be: if you have a central server, let the server do the synchronization (fixing an order among concurrent events), and not the data structure itself via an a-priori order.

Because all communication is between client and server, and never between clients, when the client connects to the server, the server can make sure that it first processes all of the client's local operations before sending it new remote updates.