As stated in the overview[1], the purpose of The Grid is "to provide a platform for collaborative creation and communication. Connected clients can chat, edit a wiki, send auto-opening web links and references to files, upload to a shared ramdisk, and access a read-only version of the root filesystem used by the grid servers, with a library of installed software".
And yes, the Grid is very much active. As of January(?) 2021, Grid's chat is powered by 9p.zone[2].
The Grid aligns very well with Plan 9 ecosystem and is very easy to get up and running, basically all you need is a gridup[3] script. You run it once, it spawns a nested rio with all the grid-related stuff inside: chat. Editor, mothra, plumber and page are disabled for now.
For those willing to maybe just lurk around without having to go through 9front installation process there is an alternative: 9gc[4]. It compiles and runs under any Unix-like OS (including in termux on android).
