Waves is very much different now compared to five years ago I remember creating a token using their platform for $1 but now they are concentrating on what's trending right now, like NFT, I am also not aware of any token in their platform that reaches even the top 50 in the market, although they are still fast and cheap based on their stat, unfortunately, they lack the right marketing to keep this coin in the radar of investors.
Token creation is still pretty cheap, about 1 Waves.
USDN (stable on Waves) is on top 100, even after all problems with stables this spring.
Official team do marketing, but also in NFTs and GameFi. For example, they participated in NFT.NYC and held events to present their AR game in Korea
and this is what i am seeing as a challenge to your project. as most projects created under waves network couldn't find success, you have to think on how to market your project to attract interest from the crypto community. waves is surviving and maybe as you said, they are creating long-term projects. but very rare that you can hear a popular project connected with waves.
when they transitioned to waves.exchange, i thought traders will go to their new exchange platform, but seems that not many traders are really using their exchange.