Bump Prod-readiness status (#6921)

README.md

@@ -40,11 +40,20 @@ More concretely, our goals are:
 
 ## Status
 
-The project is **not ready for production use**.
+Reth is performant, feature-complete, [Cancun-ready](https://paradigmxyz.github.io/reth/run/run-a-node.html), and OP Stack Ecotone compatible via the [OP Reth binary](https://paradigmxyz.github.io/reth/run/optimism.html?highlight=optimism#running-on-optimism).
 
-Reth is fully capable of syncing, however, there are still some missing features, and we are still working on performance and stability. Because of this, we are still introducing breaking changes.
+We actively recommend professional node operators to switch to Reth in production for performance and cost reasons in use cases where high performance with great margins is required such as RPC, MEV, Indexing, Simulations, and P2P activities.
+
+While we are aware of parties running Reth staking nodes in production, we do *not* encourage usage in production staking environments by non-professionals until our audits are done, and the 1.0 version of Reth is released, but we are available to support without warranty or liability. 
+
+More historical context below:
+* We are releasing 1.0 "production-ready" stable Reth once our Reth & Revm audits are done. ETA ~April 2024.
+    * Reth is currently undergoing an audit with [Sigma Prime](https://sigmaprime.io/), the developers of [Lighthouse](https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse), the Rust Consensus Layer implemementation.
+    * Revm (the EVM used in Reth) is undergoing an audit with [Guido Vranken](https://twitter.com/guidovranken) (#1 [Ethereum Bug Bounty](https://ethereum.org/en/bug-bounty)).
+* We are releasing [beta](https://github.com/paradigmxyz/reth/releases/tag/v0.2.0-beta.1) on Monday March 4th 2024, our first breaking change to the database model, providing faster query speed, smaller database footprint, and allowing "history" to be mounted on separate drives.
+* We shipped iterative improvements until the last alpha release on February 28th 2024, [0.1.0-alpha.21](https://github.com/paradigmxyz/reth/releases/tag/v0.1.0-alpha.21).
+* We [initially announced](https://www.paradigm.xyz/2023/06/reth-alpha) [0.1.0-alpha.1](https://github.com/paradigmxyz/reth/releases/tag/v0.1.0-alpha.1) in June 20th 2023.
 
-It has **not been audited for security purposes** and should not be used in production yet.
 
 We will be updating the documentation with the completion status of each component, as well as include more contributing guidelines (design docs, architecture diagrams, repository layouts) and "good first issues".