If by dead you mean grin is not -doing well, getting enough recognition, price are not good- and more
grin is new and clunky to use. I don't expect many people to use it, honestly. But I needed to rewrite the forum payments system anyway in order to support LN in the future and to fix some longstanding issues with the old code, so adding grin support worked out nicely.
It's wasn't about the value of grin or if it was a top crypto-coin, grin just fit into what was needed by the forum.
I'm super excited about
grin. All past altcoins have been just Bitcoin with a few bits tacked on;
occasionally these extra bits are useful/interesting (eg. Monero or Ethereum), but in the vast majority of cases this extra stuff is just meaningless marketing-oriented garbage. But grin is packed full of useful innovation from top to bottom; moreover, it's clearly built in the same cypherpunk spirit that Bitcoin was: increased freedom/sovereignty through technology.
Other crypto currencies where consider -from the quote above- but grin fitted in better, not because of the price or adaptation of grin -they where crypto-coin above it in that regards-.