One core difference seems to be that references are checked at runtime. In Rust you have to be able to prove that a reference to a value can't outlive the value, but Vale is more trusting, and simply crashes if a reference outlives the value in practice.

You have constraint references, which crash the program if they still exist when the value is freed. And you have weak references, which turn into null. Constraint references can optionally be compiled into raw pointers.