The last 2 years has seen every conceivable type of technological improvement over bitcoin's original appear on the scene. There have been many great successes at a technical level - better speed, smaller blockchain, proof of stake, contracts, assets etc. Yet those technical "improvements" never translated into relative marketcap. None of them even made a dent in Bitcoin. Litecoin probably got the furthest at around 10-20% but even that fell back and now stands at a paultry 2% of Bitcoin's cap.
Look at the top 10 market caps - they are all *originals*. There are various reasons for that - not least that it takes a monumental failure of a large cap asset for a holder base to wholesale dis-invest and re-invest in something else. All kinds of subtle network effects are another. Look at BTCe, one of the words formost and oldest exchanges. It still sticks with the coins it had 2 years ago.
DRK's technology and network properties will be improved upon in all kinds of ways I'm sure, but as far as the market is concerned it is A. an original crypto and B. a coherent, consolidated technology with a great track record of delivering results according to declared milestones. That will maintain and grow its marketcap for the long term.
That is a very good point. The lead dev has been coding relentlessly for over a year now, and there are no signs of slowing down. Quite contrary, the team has grown to a respectable size with committed individuals. If there are problems, and if there is new tech to be implemented, we can trust they are not going to disappear all of a sudden like some anonymous devs of some other "the next big thing to beat DRK" coins have had the tendency to do.
That said, I really hope Spreadcoin could do something that would be of use to Darkcoin, it would be awesome if DRK devs could just import a cool feature or bug fix or w/e for free.
