So I’m more some bystander, running Lemmy myself, and having serious issues about your handling of the open source licence attribution thing.
But that said, personally I’d prefer not having you set a deadline like that. Especially early stage projects, imo, need focused leadership. Maybe you need to delegate even more, including stepping back a bit and maybe paying someone else part time, but you should still keep control. You created a wonderful alternative to Lemmy, with a very thoughtfully designed Interface. That is not a sign you already need to step back just because things started moving faster than expected.