Tephra does not currently allow use of native HBase deletes due to the need to rollback failed transactions. Deletes in HBase cannot be "undone" (other than writing more data at a newer timestamp), so if a transaction includes a delete, but the transactions fails, there is no way to complete rollback.
This is discussion in HBase on adding an "undo" operation, which would allow reversing delete operations – https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-11292. If this gets added, we should transaction to using native HBase deletes, instead of the current mechanism of writing empty values to signify a delete.
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