I had a look coincidentally this morning precisely because I saw it surpassing Steem on Coinmarket Cap and it looked unfamiliar.

The main idea behind Aeternity is rather obvious: current state-of-the-art IT architecture recommends 3-tiered designs:

1. data tier
2. business logic
3. user interface

Now if looking at bitcoin with the eyes of an IT architect, one sees a rudimentary, unarchitected program. It has the storage capacity and processing abilities of a mainframe assembly program from the era of Grace Hopper and no user interface.

Ethereum is barely more evolved, architecturaly speaking, resembling a mainframe program from the early 60-ies with very limited data storage capability and a tight coupling between the data tier and the "business logic" (smart contracts)

Steem is already more advanced because it focuses on the data tier only and has events which can trigger "business logic". However the distributed consensus only works on data, not on code. Steem aims to implement "distributed code execution followed by consensus" (i.e. "smart contracts") with SMT

Now aeternity claims to do the same. Yes, everything they say in the whitepaper makes sense and is a step forward in the right direction. But that is the case with many, if not most other projects including EOS, Nano and of course Steem / SMT

The difference will be firstly in the execution - how each of these manages to pull off a flawless implementation.

Secondly, it will be in getting critical mass and dev-community adoption.

Thirdly, it will be down to sheer luck (like the young Bill Gates being at the right moment at the right place and selling his DOS to IBM)

Hence, it looks to early to call the mooning of aeternity sustainable. Looks more like "pump and dump" as far as I'm concerned.

Most importantly, there's reason to believe that once SMTs are out (if ever) STEEM will moon too

Not sure why my steemauto "fanbase" did not automatically upvote your post since I'm your fan ... nevermind, I upvoted manually.