My best guess is that a lot of people looked at its capability system and thought "wait, it's like Rust's borrow checker except even more of a hassle than the b

My best guess is that a lot of people looked at its capability system and thought "wait, it's like Rust's borrow checker except even more of a hassle than the borrow checker?" and noped out. Which is unfair to Pony, but if you think of how Rust already scares some people off then that first impression of Pony might end up doing even worse.