Interesting, it seems we have the same priorities but with a different assessment of factors. As I see it, Daniel Micay seems to know what he is doing, and is staying fairly close to upstream, so the smaller team size or userbase is not much of a concern to me.
Maybe it is just my perception of the LineageOS project being more of a “hack on it; if it works, ship it” outfit, but if there were some sort of security/privacy issue arising from a complex interaction of components, I anticipate GrapheneOS noticing it before LineageOS.
Regarding “promoting”
I definitely think people talking about something can help its adoption, and obsessive fan-like advocacy can cause pushback. What counts as “promoting” can be a bit fuzzy though.
For example, I like to talk about POWER9; if something tangentially related (memory/cache design, >2 multisocket boards) comes up in discussion, I will often mention it. Does that count as promoting? Does it only count as promoting if I do a bad job of explaining how I see it as related to the conversation?
What about the thread I made about GrapheneOS a year ago; that certainly could be seen as trying to “promote” GrapheneOS to this forum, or simply trying to have a discussion about a topic I find interesting. Frankly, I am not sure how much of a difference there really is, which is why I try to be careful about posting too often about things which seem to be of limited interest to others, lest my post be seen as merely spam.