Software engineer and Ethereum (ETH) contributor Benjamin Di Francesco asked if anyone shares his belief that self-isolation has been a catalyst for ETH2's accelerated growth. Vitalik Buterin has cleared things up.

Unseen work

Vitalik highlighted that the recent boost in Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 progress towards the mainnet is a result of years of work outside of the public view.

For many months, this progress had only amounted to blog posts and specification releases.

A big part is also previous hard work becoming visible. Eth2 work has been ongoing for *years* and had only blog posts and specs to show for it..... until one day it all started coming together and we suddenly have a flurry of active testnets. Same with rollups.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 26, 2020

The father of Ethereum (ETH) added that a significant portion of work will be forever hidden since 'for every big story already out there, there are five more lurking beneath the surface'.

Also, Vitalik emphasized the role of the decentralized Ethereum (ETH) community in ETH2 development:

Do not underestimate the Ethereum ecosystem.

ETH2 is gathering momentum

The first months of 2020 were extremely fruitful for the Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 development team in terms of vocal releases. Four blockchain engineering studios, including Prysmatic Labs, PegaSys, Sigma Prime and Nimbus, released their testnet environments for validators.

As a result, the first stable multi-client testnet Schlesi is open for validating. Despite its recent fork, it is considered a crucial milestone leading up to the mainnet.

Date of Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 roll-out still remains unclear. It appears that the idea of launching it on the fifth anniversary of the Ethereum (ETH) 1.0 mainnet on July 30, 2020, is now a pipedream.

However, major experts, including ConsenSys' former Head of Global Business Development, Andrew Keys, believe it will be rolled out by the end of 2020.