More like open sauce version of a database.

More like inventory management and less like cryptography. It’s an open ledger, which is commonly used in cryptography, but is also useful in inventory management

Right now star citizen has a database, and they control the values in the database, but these duplication glitches mean some of the code which has authority to change these values is doing it incorrectly. So the database itself just has extra integers added all willy nilly.

An open ledger, would provide a chain to custody for every new item in the game, at least the money, making these duplication glitches either impossible or, trivially obvious when they happen

There’s no reason this could not be implemented on a traditional database no need to make it open, or using distributed ledger technology, but distributed ledgers exist, and depending on how they program, could be just drop in to their program.

Plus an open ledger would mean all of these space cowboys would keep an eye on it and raise hell when they saw something fishy