I feel I could delve into a dozen issues as to why all these random coins have passed up BitShares on this weird Chinese based pump, but I will go into one.
All newly introduced gambling systems have a period of time where the square money is bled dry. Smartcoins are no different. You bet on one side or the other. It is a gambling system and a newly introduced one at that. This is one problem I always had with my limited understanding of the mechanics behind the Smartcoins. It seemed like at some point it would be lopsided. Eventually the suckers are bled dry and there is simply a lack of participants. This happens in all gambling games for the most part. Yes, you can put in pricing mechanisms to even out the wager, but at some point they become too complicated and there are many other alternatives for people to get their gambling fix without having the equivalent of a grad degree in math. So once BitShares got past the point where the square money was bled dry, the losing participants gave up and moved on to something else. Unfortunately this is a very very hard problem to fix. You need a mixture of new money, education, and reintroduction of faith in the product.
The best bet at this point would be for bytemaster to spend time trying to get any Chinese developer up to task. I'm afraid though that once the blind transfer stuff is implement, longterm motivations will somehow be lost in the mishmash of exchanges. If you could get a Chinese team taking over BTS, things might possibly be turned around. Otherwise you end up with MAS, and other things that fail just like the affiliate marketing.
This is no slight to the guys who released 2.0, but they obviously need to make money somewhere and people seem hesitant to pay CNX going forward.
Also - the wagering involved in Bitshares isn't exactly fair. Sharp participants with capital seem to be able to effect the outcome to a significant degree. This makes the sharp vs square money even more lopsided, leading to the loss of interest by the squares.
edit - Someone asked why a Chinese developer would be a good thing. #1 They are relatively cheap. #2 This is what BitShares has been setup to do supposedly. Something that can fund the development of itself. #3 A lot of crypto capital comes from the Chinese side which I suspect has a larger nationalism aspect. Chinese developers would breath new life into the project and the blockchain has a decent chance of being able to pay them.