Hey everyone, I just wanted to give hopefully the last update on Focus launch timing...

Unfortunately, we're going to delay the launch *one last time* to Tuesday 9/17 at 11:11am Pacific Time. I know it's not ideal to have to delay the launch, but I wanted to let everyone know as soon as possible, and to add that I think there's a 99% chance we'll be good to go by this revised launch date.

It's always hard to forecast exactly when everything will be ready, but the more time passes, the smaller the error bars get, and we're feeling *really* good about this revised date. Some would say "why have a target date at all, why not just launch when it's ready?" But I personally really like to have a date we're aiming for and taking seriously, rather than to suddenly surprise everyone with a launch out of the blue. And people who have been with us since the beginning know that we're usually pretty good about our timing, even if we're not perfect.

I also know a lot of people are really excited for this launch. But launching as soon as possible is less important than really nailing everything when we do. We've been working on Focus for *over a year* at this point, not counting all the time we've spent developing the infrastructure behind DeSo to power it. And when you've got something really special, like we believe Focus is, the launch date is not going to matter that much in the grand scheme (we hope).

And who knows-- launching closer to the election may be *even better* timing given the viral potential of Focus's core primitives. My wife also assures me it's good that we're waiting for "Mercury to be out of retrograde" so at least we've got that going for us 😂

On the bright side, the launch of Proof of Stake could not have been more smooth. Other than some minor issues with exchanges, which are now resolved, and some minor UI issues with our block explorer, which are also resolved, the network has been producing blocks every second or so without issues. Meanwhile, we have nearly half of all DESO in circulation staked to validators, with new validators spinning up every day.

On top of that, Openfund has done over $300k in totally organic trading volume in the last week or so thanks to the deployment of our mini-AMMs, up from virtually zero before the mini-AMMs went live. People are starting to realize the power of the order-book DEX model, only possible with DeSo. What’s more, things should get even more serious when we deploy our *full* AMMs, and subsequently launch Focus and all of its new primitives. We’re also making many big improvements to Openfund ahead of the Focus launch, and the extra timing gives us the opportunity to have *two* world-class products ready at the same time.

With the September timeline, we really couldn't be better positioned. If all goes well, we'll have an app that has the viral potential to pull a whole new class of people into crypto, the #1 order-book DEX, and the blockchain to power it all.