AUS-6 has huge potential, just like 12C27. these steels are cheap, so they don't get treated right, but better knives can be made of these two steels than the reigning super steels like s30v and zdp189. the latter steels cannot be sharpened to as thin a bevel as the former because of their large carbides, which would tear out. 12C27, AUS-6, and a couple other lower end stainless steels can hold a super thin edge at a high hardness if properly austenized. they'd perform similarly to alloy steels like 52100, but stainless.

two things prevent knives like these from taking over: people never see knives like this so we just keep looking for higher carbon and the same thick bevels, and the cheap steels are put into cheap knives so they'll never see a proper heat treat and people write em off as junk.