Assess Strata against Centrifuge, Mellow, and Lagoon on compliance, pause scope, oracle proof, and burn timing #173

Priority

Medium — informs upcoming design decisions, not blocking

User story / Problem statement

A competitive comparison against Centrifuge, Mellow, and Lagoon surfaced four
points where Strata's design or documentation may diverge from what those
protocols do:

1. Compliance without authority. Centrifuge, Mellow, and Lagoon give
   freeze and whitelist power to a human-held role. Strata's vault does not —
   real debt.
2. Pause scope. Lagoon halts everything on pause; Mellow gates by queue.
   Strata's doc is reasonable, but the code pauses less than it says — align
   code to doc.
3. Proof reference. No one verifies a proof reference on-chain. Drop it
   from the doc. Mellow and Lagoon do require a second confirmation for
   anomalous reports; that is worth more than a proof reference.
4. Share burn timing. Centrifuge burns shares at pricing time, matching
   what Strata's doc says. Strata actually burns at claim time. All three
   also make redemption cancellation stricter than Strata does.

A first pass already surfaced that some of these are not open questions —
they are deliberate decisions already recorded elsewhere, or already tracked
by open issues. That pass is not authoritative; each point needs its own
verification before a call is made.

Expected outcome

Each of the four points above ends with an explicit, recorded classification:

• Discard — the current behavior is intentional and the comparison does
  not change that; state why, citing the decision it rests on.
• Correct — code or doc is factually wrong today; fix it directly.
• Document — behavior is fine, only the doc needs to say it more
  precisely (or a stale concept needs to be dropped from it).
• Build — a real, currently-untracked capability gap; open a follow-up
  issue with a rough effort estimate (S/M/L) instead of resolving it here.

Nothing gets silently changed or silently left alone — every point gets a
one-line rationale attached to its classification, even "discard."

Acceptance criteria

• Each of the four points has an explicit classification (discard /
  correct / document / build) with a one-line rationale.
• Where an existing issue already covers a point, the write-up
  cross-references it instead of duplicating it.
• Where a point would mean reopening an already-closed design decision,
  the write-up says so explicitly — reversing one of those needs a
  deliberate call, not a quiet revert.
• A new issue is opened for anything classified "build" that isn't
  already tracked, each with an effort estimate.
• The reasoning for each point is written down somewhere durable (this
  issue's final comment, or a linked doc) so a future competitive sweep
  doesn't start from zero.

Source: pasted competitive note comparing Strata to Centrifuge, Mellow, and
Lagoon (2026-09-29).