I agree, transitioning the coin from PoW to either PoS or a PoS/PoW hybrid might be a good move. How about combining PoS with a special staking reward program? Might make the coin even more interesting for (new) investors. If the community votes for a transition to PoS or PoS/PoW hybrid, will you start with a clean chain?
You're right about the fact that a lot of features have already been (newly) introduced by other cryptocurrencies. And it's not always necessary to reinvent the wheel, so I personally believe this gives Chipcoin a great opportunity to choose from a plethora of already developed features. How about creating - besides the PoS reward incentive - some sort of second layer incentive? Not sure if that will fit the concept of Chipcoin, but it was merely a quick thought.
I have a few ideas in mind for PoS. I personally favor hardcoded pos blocks. As in 1 CHIP per PoS block instead of rewards based on a yearly %. It has to be worth it to stake your coins! The bad news is, this will probably involve a swap, so a new chain indeed... Coding PoS into the current source is one hell of a job to do.. And requires a lot of testing. It is way easier to clone a solid working source, and built the coin's future features from that
+1! I like your way of approaching this, making it actually worth something to stake your coins. If a swap really appears to be necessary then so be it, even more so if it might affect the coin's future in a positive way.
With regards to moving from PoW to PoS - I fully agree, however, it shouldn't be
just another PoS coin. Instead, it would be great to have a custom reward schedule that really differentiates Chipcoin from other coins.
Just a quick thought, haven't really thought this through (yet) so I don't know if this will work... But how about basing the stake reward on both a collateral for a minimum amount of coins held in the wallet, and the amount of time you're staking?
So for example there are 5 reward levels:Level 1 Stake rewardCollateral: minimum of 50.000 CHIP held in wallet
Reward: Level_1_reward (x1.0)
Level 2 Stake rewardCollateral: minimum of 100.000 CHIP held in wallet
Reward: Level_1_reward (x1.1)
Level 3 Stake rewardCollateral: minimum of 200.000 CHIP held in wallet
Reward: Level_1_reward (x1.2)
Level 4 Stake rewardCollateral: minimum of 400.000 CHIP held in wallet
Reward: Level_1_reward (x1.3)
Level 5 Stake rewardCollateral: minimum of 800.000 CHIP held in wallet
Reward: Level_1_reward (x1.4)
You get the idea..
Thoughts on this guys? Like I said: No idea if this can or will work, so any feedback, criticism, opinions, etc. are more than welcome! 
