Original message from the Vanilla OS Discord announcment, from @mirkob1:
For those asking for Vanilla OS 2 Orchid’s release date, the simple answer is: soon, very soon.
While the full one is: please let us work with no rush, Orchid has a complex structure, introduces new paradigms and we want to be sure that everything works the best before releasing.
Want to lay down a few of those reasons? Hard to tell with all the marketing hype WHAT exactly this distro is unique for, and why people should bother trying.
Edit: found this which answered my questions. https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20230116#vanilla
There’s the link you posted but there’s also a lot more, I think the latest blog post on their site (as of this comment) has all the new stuff. I recommend checking that out for up to date info.