Ultimately, the format will live or die by the ease of porting, which probably hinges on JUCE’s decision to adopt it or not. Having followed the rise and fall of a proprietary plugin format (Reason Rack Extension), both Reason’s storied place in the industry and the format’s technical merits failed to convince a critical mass of developers simply because the many SDK restrictions made porting too costly a barrier to entry for what was already a much smaller market.
If CLAP can make porting straightforward while gaining sufficient traction among DAWs, I could see it succeeding.