@timbeiko @AlexeyAkhunov @fubuloubu hey team! things are far from dormant 
there hasn’t been a ton of activity on this thread but i spoke a bit to @fubuloubu and @cyberbono3 about how we will move forward. i think this is an important initiative for today’s community to get value out of eth2.0 right out of the gate in phase 0. like bryant mentioned i will be speaking about the finality gagdget (and some of the other ways eth2.0 can help eth1.x at each phase) next week and also in berlin at dappcon/ethberlin. so will definitely want to catch up w/ any of you there!
in terms of status, it sounds like we may need a few more conversations to all get on the same page about what the FG will do and what place it has in eth1.x. there hasn’t been too much value in having these conversations to date as the eth2.0 spec was still undergoing revision; with the phase 0 spec freeze, we have something quite tangible to work off of it appears to me that the concrete functionality is clear, what is less clear is the timeline and how the two systems will interact. i feel pretty strongly that we need to first and foremost have a stable beacon chain network before we think about any sort of eth1.x HF. that is not to say the prototyping/EIP-drafting phase can’t happen in parallel (in fact now is the time to start!) but i don’t think it wise to try to target launching the eth1.x FG without having seen a stable beacon chain mainnet for some time – I would think months but this is part of the conversation we need to have.
given the importance of getting this initiative correct (we will be directly modifying the consensus protocol) I think the HF timeline should be supply driven, rather than demand driven; i.e. we will ship when its ready and not worry about fitting into the existing HF timeline. if that means we have to wait some months for the next upgrade to roll around then i would personally be ok w/ that.
i can’t think of anything in particular the cat herders could help w/ but perhaps i don’t fully understand the scope of their abilities so if there is any way you think they can be helpful plz let me know! i think having more process/coordination help will be more useful the closer we get to a final EIP and will want to move towards deployment.