I understand your frustrations about the long wait, as a current testnet block producer I'm on the same situation.

Some quick updates, I have been bug hunting on Avalon chain regarding the causes of the chain halt that has been happening recently, as well as other issues that can cause the chain to halt. I'm happy to report that I have found the root cause of the recent halts, which turned out to be a simple fix. I have reported it to the core devs so that the fix can be made as soon as possible.

Additonally, I have completed some other work on the Avalon chain, will probably put out a video on this by the end of this week to provide some updates to the community.