Ok here we go:
Kimoto's recently announced departure - not much of an effect on anything really
True, not much of an effect but only because it has already been one and half years since an update. Broken promises not included.
Does put the final nail in the coffin for any hope of future groundbreaking projects.
Plenty of MEC actively exchanged on both cryptsy.com and btc38.com
btc38 yes, cryptsy not so much. MEC is now one of several coins (blk, zccoin, qrk, bost, etc.) that are primarily traded on btc38 and get pumped and dumped together. It appears btc38 has large stashes of these coins, be careful.
MEC core updates being coded by the LIMX team
This is a good to see after the official Kimoto departure. Hopefully they can address the long block times that have been plaguing the coin this year.
It remains to be seen if the exchanges, chinese mining pools, etc. will adopt the core updates though.
Resilient market cap, as regularly mentioned
See point above on btc38
MEC listed on blockr.io, which was purchased by Coinbase. Note: very few coins listed on blockr.io
Yes it is a nice block explorer. But that is it. There have been no updates to it since Coinbase acquired it. Any hope that MEC may be added to Coinbase some day because of it seems far fetched. Still waiting for LTC first.
I would never consider MEC a pump and dump. There was simply too much work involved up front. One of the first alt cores based on bitcoin, the wallet, the gravity well, etc. However it will always be to me the alt with the greatest unrealized potential. Maybe some day we will find what (if anything) Kimoto had planned.
Take care friends