> The blockchain will be secured by an independent and diverse validator set, with a roadmap toward permissionless validators

This sounds like a „private blockchain“, which loses a lot of the advantages to me, but, if designed correctly, it may still produce a very solid and long living platform if there are many parties interested in keeping it running.

Do consider me skeptical that Stripe will actually cede enough control for this advantage to materialize since that’s just not what companies are incentivized to do.