With respect to Noah and the a16z team, who are usually quite sharp, this description is categorically wrong.
The features that they describe as non-negotiable, like finality, do not and cannot exist on permissioned infrastructure. That’s because whoever controls the permissioning also controls the state.
They can demand to halt the chain, fork it, break atomicity etc, then depermission validators who disagree.
Every permissioned network has a button, and control over it determines liveness and finality. The cryptography and consensus cannot stop them. It’s mostly performative.
The counterargument is that whoever controls the button risks legal, reputational, and regulatory issues if they misuse that power. That’s fine, but it’s not a crypto thing. It’s a “trust me bro” mentality, not a “can’t be evil” one.
Ironically, the institutions least likely to trust this kind of database are the very firms it’s designed to attract.
They know even better than anyone what it means to surrender your clients and assets to infrastructure that can abuse them.
You’ll see.