The work you are doing has me excited for Hive again. I will be honest, seeing how long it has been since we first heard of SMT's prior to the Hive fork and still not seeing them released, it has been a drag in the progress department.
Knowing that Steem did a lot of the code at a time when they were laying their best developers off and focusing on austerity measures, I don't blame you for being cautious. When Dan Larimer left, the quality of the code and release process went downhill dramatically. It's nice to see some proper management and competence again.
I know the community stepped up with the likes of Hive Engine creating their own layer solution, but it's not the same as a native and better performing solution. I am perhaps most excited about the second layer solution you are working on. Using custom JSON solutions and streaming the chain works, but it's a process fraught with numerous issues and complexities (which you've already outlined in the roadmap) that even the most experienced of devs in this community inevitably encounter.
I foresee the community rallying behind an official and modular layer system that pairs nicely with the creation of custom tokens. Games through to fully blown decentralised exchanges and everything else in between.
I am excited again.