It seems to me, after such an attack by hackers, it will be very difficult for the project to restore its reputation in the eyes of investors and much of the crypto community
While I believe that your assumption has some merit, it does not appear so. Verge performance continues to over-perform. Given this performance, I think it is best to assume that the community and investors are behind Verge and price will continue to go up until the announcement. The announcement itself will then have a second set of factors that may drive price up or set a new price baseline