This and the comments was interesting reading. Thank you for linking.

I would guess that the limiting factor will be regulation and compliance, not technology creation. If you listen to Robby's more recent interview on Let's Talk Bitcoin, he mentions that they've chosen a market that's away from the retail consumer to limit the amount of regulation/compliance. He then declines to mention what market Symbiont will enter, even on a broad scale, which in and of itself is a good sign (that they fear competition).

You can infer what markets they may go after by looking at Mark Smith's LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markshelbysmith

Thanks for sharing, Matt. Extremely interesting info.

Does usage of Counterparty's smart token system burn any XCP?

Is it possible for Counterparty to utilize the speed of the lightning network ? For example, 2 parties trusting the same lightning pool.

I assume you are referring to smart contracts? Then yes. Xcp is used as gas for the contract execution

Yes, the tokens are separate. The "smart" terminology is a bit confusing. You can just call tokens, tokens. That way there will not be confusion with the smart contracts, which, as Matt mentioned, will use XCP as gas.

Tokens are .5 XCP to create. The XCP is burned.