do not want to hate here or anything - I still have quite a few darks which I bought early.
The big competitor for dark is NOT existing coins adding coin mixtures, the big competitors are cryptonotes who really offer trustless anonymity.
For me it was a huge turn down when evan said that he is not implementing ring signature - I see his reasoning (it basically makes the economic model of masternodes useless), but still think it is a failure not to add it.
Evan says he has something better than ring signatures. Ring signatures are good for anonymity but they bloat up the block chain (up to 8x of bitcoin) and that will be a major barrier to any kind of large scale adoption.
If Evan's solution is 95% as anonymous and saves us from the bloat then we would be the clear choice over the cryptonote clones from a technical perspective. His solution is planned for RC4 (July). Good things come to those that wait...
I am using cryptonote coins to get acquainted with them... too many problems... ram use, bloated blockchain, problematic transactions due to size limit, all-around-scaling issues in terms of cpu/ram/disk requirement, problematic adoption from exchanges/merchants etc... the only thing that seems fixable is the gui. All the rest need heavy modification or redesign to even be usable. And that's on a technical level, because on an economic level the inflation of cryptonote coins is killing the investors and those who hedged DRK with them.
I think both drk and cryptonote coins have the same opponent: a cryptonote v2 coin that solves the first generation issues and retains or even improves the anonymity capabilities. And even then it will have the question of "is it robust and safe?" - because it's a new blockchain that hasn't been time-tested as well as bitcoin has.
I think you are undermining XMR somewhat. The developments of a theoretical v2 will keep getting merged to v1, not to mention it is the v1 guys who have the capability and network effect to innovate for a v2 to begin with.
Short term inflation is the main problem. Blame it on the hastily released "Bitmonero", the developer didn't take community's feedbacks into account.
finally we move this thread back to a quality discussion
- thanks for the input. regarding moneros short term inflation - it is a ethical question which in my opionon is impossible to answer with good or bad: it depends on the objectives.
I do not disrespect evans approach to make a coin (artificially) scarce for a high market cap. despite the positive side effect that your investment gets worth more there is also the effect that it secures the project by a huge hashing power. the third point is that there is not much use for an altcoin besides trading, so his idea of masternodes was very good.
but I can also follow the logic of the distribution of monero - it is probably not in short term giving huge reward (it is arguable if that is good or bad), but it is helping to get a wide user base - additionally they are STAYING to their social contract, which is in altcoins also remarkable. if you follow the development of their hashing power, you also see an exponential rise.
from an investors perspective it does not matter that much long term which project succeeds. I suspect the anonymous coin(s) winning that race to have a market cap around 10-25% of bitcoin.
let us see where this ship is going. I made my decision which project will probably succeed but I am open to different opinions.