The problem is that, as seen with the Catalonia situation referred to in Namecoin's tweet above, «standard» websites are vulnerable when central powers disagree with their content. (slaw.ca)
Nxt is much like Namecoin with great code, but that didn't work at the levels that other cryptocurrencies were capable of, but it did see the price hike as of late. (7binaryoptions.com)
In September 2015, blockchain ID registrar Onename announced at Blockstack Summit NYC that they were copying the u / namespace on Namecoin over to the Bitcoin blockchain using Blockstore. (bitseed.org)