If the currency itself is vulnerable to such attacks, then it creates a problem of centralization-response where, for example, fees must be changed every now and then to deal with an attack. This creates the perception that the currency needs babysitting to operate. And high fees also defeat the purpose of the currency itself, as it becomes unusable with too high fees.
A more useful fix is coming that won't require babysitting against this form of attack in the future. At the same time we have always been clear that we consider the coin to be alpha-quality and it will definitely require continued active and attentive development for some time to come. There may well be other attacks that will require a response until the coin is made more robust. Over it will indeed become more robust, but not immediately.
Prior to this attack you could send 24 KB of tx data for roughly 0.01 USD. That is much too low given the impact of these sorts of large transactions on the blockchain size. But most transactions are not 24 KB. The average seems to be something like 2.5 KB.
We will be adjusting tx fees to be per-kb like most other coins. Small or typical transactions will cost some small fraction of what large transactions will cost.
