NuoDB doesn't have a centralized transaction controller. It doesn't have a centralized anything. And it isn't "like" anything else -- all new. It's a distributed database without distributed transactions.
In a nutshell, it isn't based on pages or disks but distributed objects. Each distributed object, called an atom, can exist in as many places as necessary. Each atom instance knows of the other instances and replicates changes. Transaction nodes do SQL and are diskless. Archive nodes listen to replication and store serialized atoms on disk, S3, or some other KV store. If a transaction node needs an atom, it gets it from another transaction node or, at last resort, from an archive node that fetches the atom from disk, S3, or wherever.