viacoin has already implemented and activated both segwit and lightning network a while ago,
and did successful atomic swaps with ltc and dcr
...on a network thats orders of magnitude bigger, stronger and more secure
...not to mention, atomic swaps would not be possible without viacoin's original opcode CheckLockTimeVerify which was implemented 3 years ago.
Great stuff !
So what is it that is widening the price differential between VTC and VIA ?
Who knows. I really think Viacoin will certainly close in on vertcoin at some point. (whether or not it can pass it hard to say)
Viacoin was ahead of Vertcoin for a long time. Still lots of good updates happening for Viacoin so I'm not sure how to explain it....