TY  - RPRT
TI  - Payment Finality Is Not One Event: A Systems Taxonomy for Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure
AU  - StoneReason Research
PB  - StoneReason Research
M1  - SR-TR-001
PY  - 2026
ET  - Version 1.0
UR  - https://stonereason.com/research/reports/payment-finality-is-not-one-event/
AB  - Payment systems routinely collapse a chain of distinct technical and operational events — authorization, signing, submission, provider acceptance, network observation, execution, confirmation, native finality, evidence issuance, and business resolution — into a single word: “confirmed” or “final.” This report argues that the collapse is a category error with operational consequences, and develops an eleven-stage event model that keeps the stages separate. Drawing on protocol specifications and payment-system standards rather than on any single vendor's framing, it defends a set of non-identities — provider success is not native finality, a signature is not execution, execution is not finality, finality is not business resolution, webhook delivery is not payment occurrence, a reconciliation action is not blockchain truth, and signed evidence is not blockchain consensus — and examines how the meaning of “final” differs materially across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Stellar. The report is conceptual: it associates no original empirical dataset, and it states where empirical work would be required to quantify the timing gaps it describes. A closing section notes, neutrally, how the StoneReason payment stack implements parts of the model, kept distinct from the report's evidence.
ER  -