With the Shelley node running, the launch of Cardano’s proof-of-stake era has never been closer. The misinformed critics have been citing fictitious delays, however, Cardano is set to launch Pioneer’s program today in which limited pool operators will start testing Shelley.

Cardano critics turn a blind eye to development progress

While it’s been around for almost five years, it wasn’t until last year that Cardano began taking up significant space in crypto media. The launch of the Incentivized Testnet (ITN) for Shelley, the staking era of the blockchain, pushed it to the forefront of the industry where the solid mathematics and formal methods it was based on really made it stand out from the competition.

And now, with the node for the Shelley mainnet up and running, true decentralization has never been closer. Last month, Cardano’s founder Charles Hoskinson took to YouTube to explain the mechanics of launching the Shelley mainnet, saying it will roll out in several phases to ensure that only a fully functioning network goes live.

However, while Cardano supporters celebrated the major milestone, many critics were skeptical of the progress made by IOHK. Forums, Reddit threads, and Twitter timelines were all ripe with equal parts criticism and trolling, with people saying IOHK’s notorious launch delays meant that there was no way Shelley would see the light of day anytime in 2020.

No way Shelley won’t launch in 2020, Hoskinson says

Hoskinson’s answer to this was that Shelley shipping in 2020 is both a promise and an inevitable reality. In a short video, he addressed the rising skepticism about Shelley that has popped up on social media, saying that it was important to nip those rumors in the bud.

IOHK currently has a Shelley node running, he explained. This week, a command-line interface (CLI) will be added that will connect it to the friends and family testnet—the first, invite-only testnet that will precede the open testnet.

The friends and family testnet is set to launch next week and will feature about 20 stake pool operators from the ITN. These operators have stated that they want their names and contributions to the testnet to be known to the public, which is why IOHK will release their information once the testnet begins.

This isn’t the first nor will it be the last time that IOHK will have to fight against skepticism and apprehension. The crypto industry as a whole has been plagued with distrust ever since its inception, the only difference being that in its early days, most of the critics were coming from outside the space.

In an interview with CoinMarketCap, Hoskinson said that myths and misconceptions have always been a part of the crypto industry, with the only thing that has changed is the trends.

“In 2011/2012, the perception of crypto — if people even knew about it, because the vast majority of people didn’t — was that it was basically an underground currency to buy drugs,” he said.

Then, 2013 brought about a new type of criticism—that the industry was “a bunch of crypto-anarchists against the central bank.” In 2017 came the ICO boom and the belief that cryptocurrencies were a “magic money machine,” he explained.