I've come to the conclusion that AltCoins in general are dying. There's no denying the fact that the number of miners (not hashrates, thanks to hugely centralized ASIC mining in particular) has decreased at a staggering rate. Otherwise, how can we explain that there has been virtually no new material generated with respect to mining hardware for months now? That's just to name the most prominent example of evidence for the mass exodus of miners over recent months. Another, less evident, but just as informative example is the drop-off in BitCoinTalk activity. Where are all the miners talking about new mining software, their optimized configurations, and mining comparisons? Indeed, they haven't vanished completely, but the level of activity pales in comparison to late 2013 and early 2014.
If there is no participation, then there is no widely distributed user base, and the AltCoin without a widely distributed user base is a big ZERO.
I'm of the opinion that if an AltCoin wants to survive long term, it has no other choice but to address this dwindling user base issue. A strategy to bring new users, in this case miners, or to put it another way, EARLY ADOPTERS, to the coin has got to be the most important and pressing goal. Every effort must be made to first bring existing miners from other, dying, coins to your coin, and, secondly, to bring in 'new blood'.
How can that be achieved? I'm terribly sorry to say that I don't have a magic wand and I don't have the answer, but this is where the task begins. Devs and the community, as a group, need to develop a coherent strategy to bring people to AID. I have no doubt what-so-ever about this. AID has got to attract early adopters, and has got to do it now. This starts with an answer as to how this can be achieved. We've got to ask the question and find the answer.
I would only add that as of today, the only effective way to get people mining your coin is with the carrot, that is to say, with mining rewards. The only coins with activity of note are those with handsome mining rewards. However, this is a two edged sword. DOGE did it too fast, and now they are 'out of gas'. Their predicament was so bad that they had their backs to the wall and were forced to merge mining with LTC. By going too fast, DOGE has relegated itself to status of perpetual niche 'tipping' coin, forever, if they're lucky enough to even get that. Incredibly, in spite of the recent surge resulting from their merge mining fork, DOGE is still UNPROFITABLE even for ASIC miners!
On the other hand, going too slow can mean that you never get off the ground. This is my fear for AID. The idea is great - long term stability with no pump and dump - but have we shifted too far to the opposite extreme? With average diffs of 3 or 4 generating block rewards of 40 to 60, only the diehards are going to mine, and regardless of how easy it is, no new miners are going to be knocking at your door. That's great for scarcity, but if the scarcity of users is just as scarce, what good is that scarcity? The official pools only have a combined hashrate of around 250 MH, and the third party pools are dead (ATM). At this rate, total money supply will never even get to 50 million. This needs to be, first, recognized, and, second, addressed, or it will be a gentle into that good night (IMVHO).
My suggestion, and this is just to throw something out for debate, would be to invert the block reward scheme. The exact opposite: the lower the diff, the higher the reward. My second suggestion would be to look at the most profitable coins' payouts and up the reward to diff ratio to match those most profitable coins. The idea is to get on par with the most talked about, most mined, most everything, coins. The question is how to get there, and, well, that's how I see things and those are a couple of ideas that have come to my mind.
