I agree. Trying to incorporate every new feature as a layer on top bitcoin is like putting a square peg in a round hole. Decentralized trading, the most wanted

I agree. Trying to incorporate every new feature as a layer on top bitcoin is like putting a square peg in a round hole. Decentralized trading, the most wanted next-gen feature, was not mentioned in the article. And as you say, colored coins are one of those square pegs. That's why Stefan Thomas (developer of the original colored coin client) joined Ripple to continue his work - it has a protocol built from the ground up to support bid/ask offers and trade matching. Its also curious that a trusted "miner backbone" is being suggested as a solution to the 25% attack, because that's essentially Ripple's solution to sybil attacks (a hardcoded unique node list).