Its unfortunate that he died because it was a pretty smart idea what he created. Most of the hashes on all coins don't really serve a function except just to go meet a certain minimum difficulty but gap coin actually served a purpose and searched for prime numbers.

I think the reason why the attention for gapcoin is low is probably because it was removed from Poloniex. Whenever a large exchange delists a coin it usually means the coin is dead.

Right now many alts especially the small or medium ones are suffering and most people are just focusing on the large caps or BTC. I think what could help is maybe try and get that "free" Binance listing since you never had a premine and your idea is unique. If you get a listing it would get alot of attention and some developers might pop-up.

Good luck with this project.