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...
Where is the Freimarkets project right now? Nowhere.
Our development costs are very low, and our development speed is very high. That matters. It's why Linux has a market share many, many times that of GNU Hurd.