mjosephs, you seem hell-bent on being the great detective that finds all the shady doings of these evil, evil developers... except, quote zcoinofficial: "Because of these changes we will extend the bounty competitions."
And extended bounty deadlines, along with all the talk about brand-new research etc, probably means MTP won't really be launching that soon (also because when you look at github, the only changes that have been recently been pushed to master are sync improvements)
So... hold your horses.

@Bannedseller: It's not a friggin Zcash fork.