A distributed database system may efficiently replicate system transactions one or more read-only nodes. An update to a distributed database may be received. One or more system transactions may be performed to apply the update. For each system transaction, one or more change notifications may be generated which indicate changes to be applied in order to perform the system transaction. A particular one of the change notifications may be identified as the last change to be applied in order to complete the system transaction. The change notifications may be sent to one or more read-only nodes. The read-only nodes may process read requests for the distributed database system. The identified change notification may indicate to the read-only nodes the last change to be applied prior to presenting a state of the database that includes the system transaction when servicing read requests.