I think the free VAL giveaway is stopped and that's a positive news for the coin.
Actually free coins ruined the market totally. Hope it will revive soon. The dogecoin exchange price has increased a bit but still there is no buyer in bitcoin.
Hope people will understand and stop selling VAL at 1 satoshi.
The dev explained in his previous post that val is more suited for non-btc markets because of its limit of 2 decimal places. For btc market 1 sat ~ 5 val, so its not feasible there.