Based on a quick readover of https://github.com/PhantomPhreak/Counterparty, it looks like Counterparty wants to be Freimarkets, except Counterparty is built on top of bitcoin bad practices (eg, key reuse, "from addresses", etc) and a not-properly-softforked P2SH-like use of the blockchain's Script, rather than a merged-mined side-chain like this kind of thing should be...