This is from S. Ivanov's Q+A transcript,
https://coremedia.info/index.php/waves-news/item/366-waves-q-a-transcript-with-sasha-ivanov-sunday-december-11-2016Q: “The first question is from a pretty famous guy on our slack, Marousi; I hope that I pronounce your name correctly. He’s asking about the Waves price. He’s mystified - he can’t understand why the price isn’t shooting to the sky, and why it is so low at the moment. ‘We have released full nodes, assets and gateway, yet the price doesn’t move upward. Do you have an explanation for this?’”
A: “I think that our project has reached some phase where we have to step it up a little. We have to deliver, after we have delivered the basic functionality, we have to deliver the most essential functionality. When people will be able to do ICO’s and transfer fiat money. Probably, the market is waiting for this. But, in this case, we will be moving pretty fast, much faster than with the full nodes. (Now that) we have the full nodes, we can move fast. So, as Marousi says, next week we are starting the integration next week. We are integrating the gateways. (The) Euro gateway is ready, I mean, from an organizational point of view. We have to realize it technically now. Also, we have the decentralized exchange ready, but it needs to be tested. The code is ready, but it needs to be peer reviewed now. We have to do some reviews. We have to release it on the test-net. We plan to do that next week.
And we have to test the decentralize Exchange out. This can be really big for our project because no one did it before. No one had this setup where you can have very fast trades but the settlement is on the blockchain. Now one has had this approach, it can be really groundbreaking. You can see the code at GitHub. The code is there. You can evaluate the code for yourself. This idea is doable, and we’re going to start implementing it in reality starting in the next week. So people are waiting for this, the market is waiting, and there was some kind of build up we released the full nodes. Once we had them… people were waiting on something else, for some further action. And, as soon as we will be launching all of these things, it should have a very positive effect on the price. And of course, we don’t do any market manipulation on our own because it is not our thing. We just develop the software, and the market reflects our development and our progress. So guys, I think this is just the calm before the storm. Wait a little, and you will see that things will change.”
Also:
Q: “Let’s move onto the next question. Marousi is asking, ‘
When do you anticipate that the DEX will be released on the main net? A realistic timeframe please.’…”
A: “So, the plan is like that. We release DEX on the test-net next week after peer review. A coder from our team has to review the code again. And, we will release it on the test-net. In December we will be testing it. It won’t be released on the main-net in December, that’s for sure. Realistically, we will be able to release it around… the third week or the fourth week of January. It’s a realistic assessment of this release. We have to test it; no one did it before, so we have to test it very carefully to understand that it really works, and is secure. We have to test it for a month I think. Holidays are to be had, so it will affect our progress. So in any case, our timeframe for this is mid-January."
I presume they haven't reached the public bounties phase of the DEX testing, as it no doubt would be widely discussed here. Any news of that approaching?