According to a recent Reddit AMA, Justin Drake has given an updated timeline for the launch of Phase 0 of ETH2. Earliest date is looking like the middle of November and a practical later date being the 12th year anniversary of Bitcoin on January 3, 2021. Below is a list of things wanted to be seen before launch of genesis block.
a public testnet with 3+ clients running smoothly for 2-3 months
an incentivised "attack net" running for 2-3 months (teased here—more details soon)
a bug bounty program similar to bounty.ethereum.org running for 2-3 months
serious differential fuzzing across clients (see here)
Here are some "goodies" that can be expected as we get closer to genesis.
We're now expecting 3-4 production validator clients for genesis. Good job Lighthouse, Nimbus, Prysm, Teku for getting this far—yay diversity and decentralisation.
The blst library is unlocking best-in-class performance for clients (e.g. see here) and will be undergoing formal verification in 2020.
BLS12-381 hardware wallet integrations are happening (e.g. see here).
There's a new deposit contract written in Solidity with lower gas consumption.
