Please note this thread will be closing soon.
Why?
Because its embarrassing when the Mastercoin critics are right. Now, they can control the spin-factor at their own blog, claiming all the wonderful things that will fall from the sky if only people will just "hang in there" for a bit longer, making sure that JR can live in comfort while spinning his wheels.
At least sidechains will put this miserable collection of bodged software out of its misery.
Perhaps. But Sidechains are something different. They don't have to be publicly audit able by anyone outside of the network, unlike mastercoin, they are only (if I understand right) secured using bitcoin, but the chain themselves can be elsewhere. That's a pretty big difference to what mastercoin is doing, which is universally available to anyone looking at the blockchain.
Additionally- I think you can still expect a price bounce in the future when bitcoin 2.0 projects really start to come online. Counterparty is winning at the moment with Overstock, but who's to say someone won't want to build a competitive platform and go with Mastercoin? For example. Not to mention there have been a few media mentions in the past couple week of Mastercoin- for example RealCoin is rebranding as Tether and they are using mastercoin. That project could be even only a moderate success and will give a big boost to Mastercoin.
So while I am highly critical of mastercoin at the moment, they still have a chance to turn the boat around. Chance being the operative word of course.
Counterparty answer for sidechains is interested when thinking how fast mastercoin project have so far go forward. Can anyone even believe mastercoin team is that who solve sidechains problem.