Thanks for starting the discussion.

I would forget about Turing Complete EVM development for now. Projects that need this functionality will naturally gravitate to Ethereum. It would be nice for Counterparty to have this functionality eventually but should not be the focus in the near term.

A simple Counterparty-specific VM would be great, as it would provide a unique benefit to using Counterparty. There are many developers who would like to develop simple decentralized applications but learning Solidity and the nuances of Ethereum are a hindrance. This is a big project though. Are there enough people and resources available to make this work in a reasonable amount of time? There will be no benefit if a few people volunteering their time make a buggy mediocre VM that no one uses. This option should be explored if a team of top notch developers could work on it full time. If the resources aren’t available it should be shelved for a later date.

Hard coded features should be the main focus. The project could gain traction quickly if the right features are available and simple to use. Counterparty’s simplicity should be its strength.

I think a lottery would attract a lot of interest. The auction idea is interesting as well; instead of a limit order to sell a token maybe you could have the option to send an order to DEX that accepts the highest offer price submitted during some number of blocks.

An updated roadmap would be helpful and informative.

Finally a lot could be done if a simple contract or application could receive and own BTC, XCP and other tokens, enter orders on DEX, and distribute token assets according to certain criteria like a timed interval, block number, or a request from a specific address. This functionality would cover escrow agreements and collateral based lending, two very important functions with widespread use cases.