Acquisitions have to come from capital. Everyone in crypto should agree that generating a super block of coins is out of question.
Why?
Creating additional shares in a business is very common practice. And if done properly and used in a beneficial manner, investors are ok with share dilution because they understand it will lead to greater value of their existing shares.
Now, if you were acquiring a coin, what you care most about is the developer(s). As such, you would set very strict vesting intervals to ensure that the dev continued to work on the coin and reach set goals.
Creating shares and currency are two very different things. One is equity, one is capital. Sure, if you are treating Darkcoin as an investment, then I could see your logic, but at its core, it's currency/commodity and creating something from nothing sets poor precedence. People that understand crypto enjoy the fact that reward structure shouldn't be changing at a whim. Having the kind of centralization aspect of deciding "oh hey, we should absorb this coin by creating 1 million new coins" is ridiculous. It completely changes what crypto stands for. I wasn't against the idea of the SDC merger, I was against the idea of changing the reward structure via superblock. It's completely off the table, regardless of opportunity, to issue new coins. I was against the airdrop back in March/April as well.
You make good points and I am enjoying the debate.
The problem I see and the mistake that most people in cryptocurrency circles make, is thinking of these coins as pure currency like dollars. Instead of dollars, you want Darkcoin. Instead of the Federal Reserve, you want the free market.
With dollars, there is an entity that says, "THIS is the means of exchange" and there hasn't been any real competition for hundreds of years. With cryptocurrency, there is new competition every single day. At some point developers of a coin may say, "We're
done except for critical bug fixes" but we've begun a new era of currency/economic exchange. Technology is progressing at an ever-increasing rate and that top 10 coin that is "Done" today will be nothing in 3, 5, or 10 years because technological innovations will make it obsolete and new coins will take over. In order for a coin to continue to dominate, it will have to adapt to changing technology, economic situations, and governmental regulation (not saying they have to comply with regulations of course but it will affect cryptocurrencies).
In order to compete, a coin needs top developers who are creative innovators, strong business acumen, and a militant community of supporters. Because of the low burden of entry and enormous potential reward in cryptocurrency, many good developers who enter the field are going to want to start their own coin which will lead to brain dilution. Through the strategic use of acquisition, those developers can be brought under a single umbrella. Without it, a coin WILL be passed sooner or later. Look at the number of developers behind Ripple and the kind of people in charge there. As more money pours into cryptocurrency and it becomes a bigger industry, there WILL be business seasoned/hardened executives leading coin development initiatives. And I guarantee you they will be doing strategic acquisitions and the big money investors/hedge fund types will love it. Taking the means to acquire coins off the table would be an enormous mistake.
There's a reason companies like Google and Apple buy up tons of small companies each year. Occasionally it's for the technology, but the vast majority of the time it's for the developers. If either company stopped and said, "We're done" they understand that, despite their positions today, with the way technology is advancing, they would be nothing within a short time.
No one is saying Darkcoin is finished and if anything, Evan and team keep innovating. There have already been numerous additions to the development team and it will only be a matter of time before more devs are brought on. There absolutely could be consolidation in the altcoin space and I believe it will happen. If venture capital or other forms get involved, that would be outside capital for purchases, not generating new coins to do so. The day a coin can change it's max supply or reward structure on a whim is the day it fails to do what crypto really stands for. That will also be the day that I exit my position in entirety. The beauty of open source technology is that anyone can take it, change it, and make something of their own. In a world where large corporations buy smaller companies (for talent, for technology, for branding, etc), there is something "behind closed doors" that the larger company is after. These smaller companies aren't putting out their trade secrets (i.e. open source) for anyone to use, hence why the larger company looks to acquire.
I guess what I am ultimately saying is, if Spread has capable devs and they actually want to be apart of something, they should do commits to Darkcoin's codebase. After all, they are implementing something Evan designed. Darkcoin already has the network and exposure to actually _do_ something. That's not to say Spread couldn't succeed on its own, I just question the chances of it actually happening. If the devs want to experiment, go for it and being that it is open source, any viable improvements could very well be implemented on Dark's end.
I'm glad that in the case of the airdrop for the instamine and the SDC merger, both were turned down largely by the community due to the dilution all Darkcoin holders would face as well as the principals behind changing max supply and reward structure on a whim.
