I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'veteran' and 'supporters'. WOuld be grat if you could clarify what you mean exactly.
The idea of STeX is that you have trading pairs of coins that are traded on (many) other exchanges with different spreads and rates. So if a coin is cheap on one exchange you buy it there through the liquidity pool of the STeX exchange.
So there is no inherent need of a 'partnership' with said exchanges or any support for the platform itself. It would be nice (maybe), but it's definitely not needed for the project to be successful or profitable