Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin made the headlines on May 12 when he seemed to have confirmed that Ethereum would introduce one part of its multi-phase upgrade in July. However, Buterin has clarified that he had misheard the question that was being asked, not hearing the word “July” and rather thinking that he was asked about Ethereum’s general development. 

The doubt about the launch date was given more attention after a twitter post from Eth 2.0 testnet coordinator Afri Schoedon, who said that he hadn’t seen the Ethereum co-founder’s talk, and wasn't sure if that Buterin had said July. 

CoinDesk, which is currently hosting the Consensus: Distributed conference where the statement was made, was given a full statement by Buterin, who said,

I re-listened to the interview. The question indeed contained ‘July’, I don’t recall hearing ‘July’ so it sounds like it’s my fault for mishearing. Apologies for that. My actual stance is that eth2 is ‘on track’ in that there aren’t any unexpected bumps in the road, testnets are coming along, etc, but I defer to the client devs on timelines and if they are now saying ‘Q3’ more broadly then I believe them.

However, despite this, the general sentiment remains the same - which is that Ethereum 2.0 is on a steady path towards full release. 

The upgrade will introduce Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to the network, as well as bring exponentially greater scalability.