My experience with large software projects is that there is an 80/20 effect where the first 80% happens really fast and easy and then the last 20% gets harder and harder and harder.
Most of the challenge of software engineering is dealing with the scale and complexity of the codebase itself. So greenfield development is always going to be faster at first because there's simply less code to go around. But as you keep pouring code in, you are creating the complexity that makes software development hard.
I definitely wouldn't do a linear projection of their current velocity and assume the whole project will keep moving that fast.
Essentially the core functionality doesn’t take very long to build out. But the final polishing, details, edge cases, and bug fixes soak up a huge amount of time.