Btw: I'm also not too happy with the direction we've seen since the ICO.
I hoped for better communication and a decent Mac-wallet etc.
...
Why do I mention Factom? Because I see some similarities. And what I really like and always focus on, even if not a coder: Constant updates on github:
https://github.com/antshares
Last one is 33 minutes ago. So, they are working on it. Second point is: Yes, the price sucks. But that's not only a result of uncertainty about the project, it's more a result of the rising Bitcoin-price. Plus: Those who are still sitting on their ICO-ANS can collect Antcoins - and it can be expected that they are not worthless.
Conclusion: This needs some patience but I'm still optimistic that it will pay out, maybe like Factom did and does.
I might as well share PUBLIC INFORMATION I gathered:
Zhengwen Zhang/Erik Zhang/张铮文 (Onchain Chief Technical Officer, Antshares Co-Founder)
Block Chain Technology and Computer Security Specialist, CISA Information Systems Auditor.
Zhang Zhengwen is one of a handful of technical experts who have a low-level protocol architecture and development capability in block chain, and
the author of the dBFT consensus mechanism has realized all the protocol layer code of Antshares. Before the founding of Antshares, Zhang Zhengwen engaged in computer security and digital currency research and development work.
https://github.com/erikzhang[email protected] Room 502, No. 32, Lane 816, Baochun Road, Shanghai, China
Tel: +8613641890381
According to Zhang:
Virtual Machine is the key technology to realize a smart contract system. Smart Contract is the vehicle of business logics that exist on the layer of technological implementation. The execution of smart contracts requires a runtime environment, i.e. a virtual machine. On different blockchains, the expression capacity of smart contracts on business rules is limited by the capacity of virtual machines. The developers of blockchain applications should not only master the characters of the technologies of the blockchain, but also functionalities of corresponding smart contract virtual machines.
The designs, esp. the performances of virtual machines differ at home and abroad due to the different blockchain platforms. Bitcoin VM is light, clear and with a good performance. But it has limited support to advanced languages, status maintenance as well as Turing-Completeness. EVM is a more complete system, yet its architecture restrains itself: either stays within the architecture with limited performance, or breaking the architecture with external codes. Fabric has a very interesting strategy, allowing for a flexible selection of VM dockers and languages available on the market, yet losing the control to the VM and certainty. In the meantime, its sandbox VM has limitations over performace.
Antshares Founder Eric Zhang pointed, “when we were designing the Antshares VM, we were thinking about a design that merges the advantages of several other VMs, a light-weight universal blockchain VM that is based on OpCode therefore was born: The Antshares VM, in response to the pursuit.”
When comparing VMs of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Fabric, you can tell that Antshares VM has a faster execution speed, better performance, more complete logic control (Turing-complete) and supports to advanced languages. The ledger data interaction and status maintenance can be more flexible, while the offchain data interoperability and integration can be expanded, empowering the Antshares VM to be a universal VM for multiple blockchains.
Antshares, as we always do, will open source the codes. This will not just be beneficial to the community developers, but in fact echoes with our spirit of shared open-sourceness,” Eric Zhang went on, “an absolutely perfect solution absolutely do not exist, else why we see the difference here and there. However, we can start by merging the outstanding qualities of aforementioned VMs under specific scenarios to quickly iterate and achieve incremental improvement before perfection.”
It has been told that Antshares VM has great performance, Turing-complete logic control and is capable of flexible onchain and offchain data interoperability. Supports to advanced languages can be expected via corresponding compilers. A customable system calling will bring support to any designated blockchain.
Zhang said, the source codes of Antshares VM are also available via GitHub now. The whitepaper introduces a light-weight universal blockchain VM, which can be utilized by users on the Antshares Blockchain to deploy and execute smart contracts, upgrading digital assets into programmable smart digital assets.
Totally embarrassing that you have a web wallet that takes 4 to 6 days to sync and a core wallet that closes itself. well done. 
