where did you read, that they "walk away" after release? they worked 1,5 years on that, would be a little bit strange if they would do this, its their baby.
Ah, I can't find the quote now, but it was from a video where he answered questions from the public.
Basically he said
"We are cryptographers and do this as a science project.
Once the open code is out there, we will walk away from it and observe what the community does with it"
To me it seems that they are more interested in getting publications in scientific journals than actually establishing a new competitive Alt-coin.
I find the project very fascinating, so I hope I am wrong about this.
If they really do shortly after the code is released, (I hope they manage to put a GUI in there before they leave), it will be a messy grab for the lead by different teams to put a working update/fork out there to profit from the first mover advantage/innovation boost=price appreciation of any chain that can successfully make use of the Zerocoin code base. In that case I would bet Anoncoin takes the lead as they will already be familiar with the complicated code mechanics and have their own implementation out there (they
Anoncoin/Zerocoin testnet to come online in 3-4 weeks from now.).