That's one possible approach however especially during end of last year they could get significant investment and boost their dev team like ten times which would lead to stronger product and faster development. This year, there are many DEX projects and it will be much harder, especially for a small (in terms of capital and resources) project like NVO. I believe closest competition for NVO is Exodus wallet/exchange and it is already much bigger beast. I wish NVO the best (still holding few tokens) however it's hard to imagine they will succeed against current competition.
there will always be competition, but, competition is a good thing. it helps bring more people over to the DEX world. even if they use another exchange. ask yourself, how many centralized exchanges do you use? im willing to bet it isn't just one. same thing applies towards dex's. this is where NVO will be different from all others because of the plugin system allowing for any and all coins to be listed with in its network. Personally i would kill for a network where every coin I want to buy is listed and in the same place. this is why i invested into NVO because the idea is true decentralization