Alpha 3 will be the secured autonomous network. so routing nodes from home for anyone to attack. We may even offer rewards to attack that, but it will not have data (i.e. not a vault), that’s alpha 4 (not a huge step). Alpha 2 is a huge deal, the work is massive and the team have done amazing things, but it is mimicking the current Internet to an extent. So we are playing into the feed a tesla car hay type thing there to. We also need to get that right. It’s more like, “of course you can do what the Internet does” and if you ignore the power of this then it might even feel like just the Internet. It’s really much more than that, but alpha 3/4 need to back that up. So we need Alpha 2 for mutable data, dynamic apps/sites and more, but there is a much bigger thing in the background that will run this. Some apps will show the capability of what the Internet cannot currently do, and that will be where we all start to think, oh! A bit like the message in an earlier testnet that sent a private key of a bitcoin wallet, simple, but said a lot.
@viv had a great description of this when he said, "it’s like we are building a quantum computer that will tackle previously impossible tasks but it seems for people to understand it then it has to be able to run minesweeper first 
" I think that says a lot actually.
So its a mammoth task and just cannot all be done at once, I wish it could, but yes I do get your point, if folk can accuse or find a reason to doubt they will (probably correctly), regardless. This is the dichotomy I think the industry has, rather than demonstrating progress (so not finished) there is sometimes more belief in papers and chatter. So we are in a strange place where we demonstrate progress, but the remaining part is the Achilles heel, however if we demonstrated no progress (so did not start) but chatted about it and published loads of papers shouting about them and wrote a ton of almost related clever blog posts it would be seen as world changing Kinda weird, but true. Interesting adjunct
IMHO, it’s such a big, difficult thing to explain that it takes a ton of papers (which we do have) and nobody will read them all, even some of our devs have not, but then folk tell us they don’t exist. We do need to improve communications a lot though, for sure.
TL;DR, Our communications needs to drastically improve, not move into hype, but clearly define SAFE and where we are right now, which is actually a terrific place for us in house anyway (we are in a great place design wise, just implementation design and speed that annoys us)
Not sure really Rob, I think it will be a mix of many of these, but planned more than usual and some of us taking the time to speak with journalists etc. We, or me for sure, spend so much time rejecting approaches from so many people for so many project ideas and things it makes you a bit insular, but we need to reach out to industry commentators and beyond to relay the correct pitch. However we will have our usual, not too soon approach So we need to get better, but not mental or knee jerk. We have a PR company and the guy there is really amazing. So we have the capability to do this when we want, we just need to pitch it perfectly and with the correct levels of excitement linked with launches/tests etc. So rather than us just releasing a testnet/alpha/beta we should make sure it’s seen by as many as possible. Then I think we all benefit from increased participation and better tests as well.
[EDIT sorry folks, I think I might be derailing this thread, happy if it’s moved in any case]