Three responses:
a) In terms of what Bitcoin might implement in the future, I suspect the answer is "nearly nothing." They have been arguing for three years over the trivial change of increasing block size. I suspect that if they can't agree on something so trivial, they will never be able to agree on something truly challenging, like implementing Lightning Network or Sidechains or Confidential Transactions.
b) For every "Betamax was superior but VHS ultimately won" argument, I'm reminded of the countless times when the technologically superior competitor DID, in fact, win. Occasionally the world sees Betamax fall to VHS. But far more often, the world sees MySpace fall to Facebook. In countless examples that have been referenced ad nauseum, the initial entrant to a field was ultimately overthrown by a later rival, despite the advantages of network effect.
c) In the event that Evan should ever choose to use his talents elsewhere, the project will continue under the auspices of the other developers. As much as I don't want to ever see Evan leave the project, it's naive to assume that he will continue to work solely on Dash for the rest of his career (he is only in his early thirties!).
Just for fun and to play the devil's advocate:
a) Apple was a dying company rescued by, none less than Microsoft and its $200M dollars investment. Than Steve Jobs had returned...
b) This is by far the best argument I can't argue against
c) It's too early in this project's life to speculate it would be able to survive and thrive without Evan. I am aware of numerous advantages his project has and I do hope it would survive long enough to attract a critical mass of users / investors needed for its long-term success. Otherwise MNs are going to be like a perpetuum mobile machine producing nothing of value but the "units" of something no one uses.
Granted, my long-term outlook is greatly impeded by this staggering, real time loss of DASH, relative to BTC, value, now at
0.00530262You are correct in many ways. I would suggest that one key difference is the decentralized consensus model that governs crypto-currency. There has never been anything like it in the world, so to speak of Apple being bailed out by Microsoft and the return of Jobs, while accurate, isn't necessarily relevant. Unless Satoshi returns, Bitcoin is likely to continue being helplessly mired in the political disaster that is already present. Many of the leading developers are basically saying that development of the protocol is done for good, and that all new features will have to come from services built on top of the protocol.
Don't get me wrong--Bitcoin is great, but it isn't finished. It's slow, it can't handle enough transactions per second, and its blockchain can't scale. It has governance problems and perpetual funding issues, relying on the generosity of users who contribute to a foundation, or on the generosity of MIT University. Not only that, but make one tiny mistake and Bitcoin's psuedo-anonymity is broken and your entire financial picture, from beginning to end, is revealed. Despite all that, the community, in three years, can't even address the issue of increasing the block size.
Mark my words: Bitcoin's number one handicap is political deadlock and failure to achieve consensus.