The creator basically says "with dop you have an easy/clean API. Is like using socket.io but easier", so yes, it's more of a thin layer over Socket.io to propagate changes. It doesn't handle consensus and definitely isn't a library for shared document editing or more substantial cases that require OT or other algorithms.
"definitely isn't a library for shared document editing or more substantial cases that require OT"
You are right, is not a library that provides a way to resolve sync conflicts. Consensus algorithms is a difficult topic, and I haven't seen an approach in JavaScript that resolve this problem. Maybe gun, but I haven't tried.
If you just need client-server architecture with reactivity, why don't you give a try to dop?
There's a discussion here with the same criticisms: https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/5sm5d0/distribu...