Distributed systems employ a lot of synchronization - data synchronization (get all nodes consistent on data) as well as time synchronization (so every node has the same view of time).
Time synchronization can be achieved via protocols like NTP and PTP (the latter is precision time protocol - for applications like high frequency trading), but also logical systems like Lamport timestamps which order events without relying on physical time.
Lamport timestamps are a logical clock mechanism to capture chronological and causal relationships in a distributed system. Leslie Lamport introduce this as far back as 1978.
A variation of logical clock known as a vector clock is used in a variety of distributed database systems.
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