I'm pessimistic about AEON's price in the long term, say 5 years from now. AEON is insufficiently differentiated from Monero to have much chance of benefiting from it's own network effect.
I'd be in favor of doing something with AEON that Monero won't do, such as sticking with an ASIC-friendly approach.
Or a lightning network possibility... I agree that something has to give at some point. Throwing in funds to update the code up to Moneros standards with the exception of having cryptonote-lite PoW is sort of silly.
The least we can do as a community is to throw up a FFS address in order to recruit someone from MRL, or better yet one of the youngins they get interested in coding through Sarangs High School program to generate some ideas on how to make a lower fee/speedier confirmation coin that offers relative privacy.