This seems like an interesting project indeed.
It is an interesting project, moreover it's one of the longest established, peer reviewed projects with a valid goal in mind, and innovative first to market features such as proof-of-burn distribution, decentralized market, programmable smart tokens, decentralized exchange and voting, and ability to 'clone' ethereum smart contracts.
This feature has taken a while to launch to public, and not much news has been given. There has been some promises of 'soon' then some setbacks. So of course some impatient people have withdrawn interest and/or funds and moved to other projects to pursue short term gains.
However work still continues, slack still active, github work still ongoing, projects still building on counterparty stack, the smart contract feature will exist, at some point. CounterParty Will be coming up to
3 years now shortly it's been running , making it one of the most hardened and tested 2.0 coin launches in this space. Many projects abandoned much sooner- the ones that aren't abandoned grow stronger, they've become proven as technology and as a store of value, and they generally exhibit stability.
The train still chugs on and I anticipate it to slowly establish further dominance in the space. The crypto landscape is constantly in a state of flux and evolution. This project can rise; both in usage and value because it has all potential. We need more community integration however.