Forced Exit

Suppose the exchange stopped cooperating — the sequencer went offline, or simply stopped including your transactions. Your balance is not stuck.

The rule

Any transaction can be submitted straight to the settlement contract's forced-inclusion queue, and every block must consume the queue in order. If the sequencer fails to include a queued transaction within the freeze window — 24 hours — anyone can freeze the exchange against the last proven state root. From then on, any account can exit: it submits a proof that its balance exists in the frozen state, and the contract pays the account's owner address directly.

• Open positions do not need to be closed first. The exit proof values every open position at the frozen mark price, settles funding, and pays out the resulting equity.
• Anyone can submit the proof for you, so you do not need gas on STRATO to trigger it.
• Only the owner is paid. The exit binds your owner address; there is no other recipient the contract will accept.

Why the owner address matters

An account cannot exist without an owner address — the exchange's state machine refuses to create one, the data format cannot encode one, and the settlement contract rejects one. That is not an accident; it is what makes the exit possible. Whatever happens to the exchange, there is always an address the funds belong to and a proof that can send them there.

Withdrawals in normal operation

You never need the exit while the exchange runs: ordinary withdrawals are signed with your trading key, included in a block, and paid out once the block is proven. The exit is the guarantee that sits underneath — the reason "your funds are yours" is a property of the contract rather than a promise.