Many people share the idea that the development of the Bitcoin code is basically at a standstill (with little to no new features or improvements being introduced), and that it is still too complicated for the average citizen to use.
GAWs idea of a fund which promotes the coin and helps widen merchant adoption is a good one, and if anything it will help the cryptocurrency space as a whole improve.
They have the funds to develop a superb platform for their new coin (although it will likely take some time), so we will definately see some new ideas taking shape and maybe be implemented in BTC aswell.
In a time where industrial scale mining dominates bitcoin, and little new ideas are being proposed, it is atleast an interesting solution and I am excited to see what will happen.
In a few months we will all be wiser and see what prevails. GAWs codenamed "hashcoin" is designed to work in conjunction with bitcoin, using a sha256 hybrid blockchain featuring faster confirmations.
I would not see it as a threat to bitcoin as a whole, but as an addition to the ecosystem.
Well, the other side to that coin ( ) is there are success stories relating to the foundation BTC set and it does not involve having a financial fund to "manufacture" value and success.
Although some people think it may be based on a joke, it is hard to reject Dogecoin as a viable example of what raw community-backed crypto is all about. The 80K+ people who adopted it within the first 90 days of its release and who do not really care about what the short-term value was (or is) effectively negates the need for a centralized fund or other financial mechanism to insure ongoing growth (which is happening on a daily basis). Talented developers have reduced tip-bot and wallet transfers times to seconds from minutes with no solicited compensation for their efforts and increased the inherent stability of the altcoin's foundation along with others through merged mining and mutual collaboration. Add the immense amount of goodwill that dog-on-a coin crypto has done for the word in terms of charity, crypto exposure, and overall education in less than 11 months of being in existence and it is hard to ignore the real "secrete sauce" to a successful altcoin venture is staying true to what works while making it simpler for greater acceptance and mainstream adoption....Not techno-jabble marketing hype surrounding mythical thermodynamic blockchain pasteurization that then utilizes a flux-capacitance derived photon accelerator to artificially realize an unsustainable marketcap that reflects nothing of tangible value beyond CGI based mining derivatives that are so confidential in nature, even thinking about questioning their inner-workings is paramount to committing treason against MtGAW and punishable by... well, we all already know that story...
Putting everything proven successful thus far in to context regarding the number of coins being produced, the difficulty vs. reward, inflationary vs. deflationary distribution, the soft caps, the market caps, etc, existing altcoin technologies are still fundamentally the most sold approach. In fact, ALL crypto is still in a PROOF OF CONCEPT mode and what it appears GAW/Zen wants to do, if any portion of what they say pans out, is put the cart ahead of the horse. This is the same shortsighted view many take on the hash-oops!... haste---makes-waste side of the industry where it is all about the "pump, pump, pump, then dump" fluff-methodology that does not pan out too well in the real world.
Lastly, I believe the next phase in progressing the POS, POW, and other related pseudo environments is to build upon their successes once they are considered proven and market-matured (give it another 12-14 months); making them more robust, efficient, and secure by utilizing the POWER OF NUMBERS that only comes from the people of the world and not a few AWS or Rackspace based mainframe servers.
Scott