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.
Good that you're still on the radar but come on, what plan and direction we have. There hasn't been any significant improvement in maybe 2 years:
Mobile-friendly PoW and block time (released) <- would require mobile friendly miner/wallet
GUI wallet (in progress) <- let's be honest no progress at all
32-bit and ARM support (released, but requires low memory footprint below) <- reference to other enhancement
Low memory footprint (in progress) <- most important for every miner/user/exchange. No improvement since beginning
Signature trimming <- nothing
Blockchain pruning (test release available) <- feature implemented, but pretty much useless
Multisig and payment channels (instant payments) <- definitely not in place
So be honest with the community and open up the development to more people. If you are busy, involved elsewhere there are people out there that would be dedicated fulltime devs and for much less than you would (see your comment regarding funding). I believe the devs from India or Eastern Europe can deliver high quality code and maintain the coin well for much less - maybe 1BTC per month, which is like 6k AEON. It would improve the visibility and bring more people, raising the price.
I was holding a large amount of coins ages ago and got rid of it. I'm still holding some and wish all the best to this amazing little monero twin. But to me it seems like you left it alone and it sits there in the dust being overlooked.