@randymarsh welcome!

I think the main challenge is to create a stable network that can handle all manner of devices joining and trying to take part in farming, as vaults. The tests revealed that to achieve this, there was a need to have vaults prove they can handle each task before allowing them to participate by being used for the task. MaidSafe have been busy working on the how, and are currently coding this up so they’ll be able to start testing this fairly soon. How much more work is needed on this after those tests start is the big unknown, and nobody will know until they happen whether or not this nut is cracked, or needs another “bash”

It is my impression that will be a major achievement in terms of: never been done territory (so it’s hard!), and also will open the way for MaidSafe to power on in other areas.

There are other important things to do, and protecting against major outages is a biggy, but my impression is that this is less hard, no less stupendous an achievement, and much less of a block to other activity, the most important of which is IMO…

Safecoin! This is easy to implement, but will be tested to death, so will still require some time. Testing with test Safecoin can’t begin until the stable public network is sorted though. It will be very exciting, and will I suspect be the point when bitcoin folk and many others begin to take note. It will create a lot of interest, and draw in a lot of attention, both helpful and no doubt also some deliberately destructive (more FUD for example) from those who fear this project, or have other reasons for not wanting it to succeed.

Once test Safecoin is going everyone here will be wondering when the network will switch to beta and Safecoin become real. I’ve no idea how long that or the above (earlier steps) will take though.

These are just my opinions, but I hope a still useful summary.