Core dev of ETH here. There are at least 100 people from independent teams unrelated to the Ethereum Foundation working on the transition to proof of stake for ETH, which just launched this December 1st. https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-2-0-beacon-chain-goes-live.... This did not require any "Vitalik intervention". My team is not even affiliated with the Ethereum Foundation and we maintain one of the main implementations of the protocol: https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm