Because it's the first fully decentralised coin with 0 confirmations needed to respend your coins...and it's fast...super fast (les than 1 second).
Has anyone credible reviewed the white paper or the code?
No official review yet, but in the thread unofficial ann, monero guys stated that they are interested in the scalability solutions of vnl and John is having a meeting later this month with guys from Bitsat, guess they have looked at the code at least..
Let's not name drop just yet. I'm the driving hype behind VanillaCoin in the Monero space, but I am extremely skeptical until I hear some firm opinions from long time accounts I trust.
A lot of Vanilla's growth feels... off somehow.
Maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe I'm an idiot who will sit on the sidelines and watch the next big thing take off like a rocketship.
But I've learned that hype is cheap, and is the real and honest tech that makes or breaks something.
*Edit*: After hearing gmaxwell is extremely skeptical of it, I'm out. I'm not touching it with a ten foot pole until further notice. Congrats to everyone who made monster gains with VNL, honestly. But just don't be the last to leave the party, because there may be a big mess.