1. Yes I'm still here.

2. The donations fund is about 450K AEON. At current market prices (which are very volatile), that's about 135 000 USD, assuming it could all be sold without crashing the market, which is unlikely. Can you pay a development team for that? No (well at least not for long). Can you pay bounties for some work? Yes, and we have done so for various things like mining and pool software. (Also offered for web site development but that was done for free.) I'm happy to offer more bounties if people step forward to do work. Failing that I'm happy to continue holding the coins in case they become worth enough to actually fund a good development effort. Will that ever happen? Who knows.

3. I'm reminded of Charlie Lee telling us a while back that LTC didn't need 'features' (at a time when coins were always trying to one up each other on features to capture market interest). He was right. Most of those coins are gone and LTC is still here (and at its own pace and in its own way is getting features too). Likewise, AEON is still here. We may not have all the features but we have a coin that works, where security and maintenance releases get made when necessary to keep it working. We have a good community. In time we will likely get our features too, at our own time and in our own way.

4. I wish any other coins (cryptonote or otherwise) the best with their projects but what they do is their business. We have our own plan and direction.