The whole point of Conflict-free Replicated Data Types is that you don't need an authoritative server. You're thinking of Operational Transform which does require an authority.

While it is true that CRDTs don't require an authoritative server, the hub and spoke model (which could also be thought of as having a well-known always-online super peer) is more efficient and provides a better user experience. In practice most products that are built with CRDTs today use this model.

I may have worded that poorly but my intent was to suggest that it would work better if there wasn't a server.

I didn't know the name for the serverful alternative though, so thanks for that.