You are correct. I know what I am talking about and have been hired by devs to coach them thru problems exactly like this (coin metric problems), problems with bad PR, and problems with exchanges not willing to list their coin unless I convince the devs to fix certain things. I have done this for too many alt coins to even remember. A few of the top of my head are Vanilacoin/Vcash, Denarius (DNR), Quatloo (QTL), Xuro, Pepe/Meme, and countless others. I have dealt with hundreds of alts over the last 5 years.
I have been on this forum for 5 years too. Good to see a veteran. I also didn't buy eth, because i was invested in syscoin back then, which did okay too. I really hope devs listen to you because this coin is still early and can be saved from exchange disasters. Waiting to hear from them.
Hearing from what you tell me I really like, there really should be a great exchange for this and it all depends on them to immediately add it later.