I agree with people who dislike the new logo. Things it reminds me of: a software company, a local skilled tradesman's logo (carpet cleaning, electrician, etc.), an employment agency, a corporation. In no way does it strike me as money. The site also has that very early 2000's vibe. It doesn't have that hip web 2.0 feel. Overall the branding is very poor in my opinion.
I'd also like to note that volume is falling and the price is flatlining while this coin idles away on Poloniex and Bittrex. I really feel that Mintpal should be a goal for this coin. "It's not ready yet" isn't an excuse. Blackcoin and Darkcoin are also not finished yet but they are still on there. When Darkcoin got put on there it was very early development compared to now. I feel there's some sentiment in this thread that people want the price low so people can accumulate the coin. Well if the price falls then the only people accumulating will be the hardcore fans and the idea that staying off Mintpal will improve distribution is faulty in my opinion.
I really like this coin and I'd like it to succeed but at least in the short term things are looking very rough around the edges.
Good - the logo shouldn't strike you as money. Monero is not money. It's a store of value and a very private medium of exchange. The sooner we stop thinking about "money" in the traditional sense the better, as that thinking limits and retards our ability to innovate. And, at any rate, the arguments you make could equally be applied to
Google - "The logo reminds me of a children's toy. In no way does it strike me as innovative or even a search engine. The Google search page doesn't have that hip web 2.0 feel. Overall Google's branding is very poor in my opinion."
In terms of the website, have you read
this week's Monero Missives? I'm guessing you haven't yet - probably a good starting point before discussing the branding.
Lastly, we are not in control of exchanges or their adoption strategy. I will say this much: Blackcoin and Darkcoin are forked from Bitcoin. The amount of effort required by an exchange to add them is exactly 0. Monero requires a massive code change; it requires two daemons to operate (we are working on bundling this for exchanges) and it requires a vastly different RPC API. It more than likely requires a major change to the underlying database design, since payments are made to a single address with a different payment ID per-user. Watching for deposits is also challenging: the get_payments RPC API call needs to be polled
for every payment ID instead of just hammering 'listreceivedbyaddress
false' as one would for a Bitcoin-forked cryptocurrency.
This is why Monero can do things that the Bitcoin-forked cryptocurrencies can't do at all (or can't do cleanly and in a non-kludgy way), but it means that exchange pickup will be slow. Instead of viewing the Monero development timeline as you would view some Bitcoin-fork that has 99% of the work handed to it on a silver platter, view it instead as Bitcoin was in February, 2009, when it was nary a month old, but with the advantage of some network effect and peripheral infrastructure already in play. Ask yourself: what would you expect of Bitcoin in the beginning of 2009? If Monero succeeds it will not do so because of a slick website or a logo, it will be because it provides a unified user experience whilst delivering on the promise of being secure, private, and untraceable.