We've contributed a massive amount to the infrastructure of the coin so far, enough to get recognition from cryptonote, including optimizing their hashing algorithm by an order of magnitude, creating open source pool software, and pushing several commits correcting issues with the coin that eventually were merged into the ByteCoin master. We also assisted some exchange operators in helping to support the coin.
I don't think that mining software (clients, pools), or supporting exchanges to add monero "count" as coin-tech development. Bugfixes, more so.
If they added BCN right now it would be laughably in the top 5. Roll Eyes
It would be filtered out due to premine. So no top5.
As I have said before, the bytecoin developers are welcome here. If they want to develop the technology they are free to do so, here, without a hidden 80% premine. This was not an attempt to steal anything from them, it was just a relaunch of an otherwise good coin without a premine scam, nothing more.
The problem is that you telling them what to do, and where to be, when they've made the coin is ...problematic. You can't put them in a box and tell them these are the rules you'll play with.
They made the coin. Don't you get it? They have immense power compared to clones because they can relaunch tomorrow a new coin with cryptonote tech V2 or something and pull the carpet underneath the clones big time. It will be like obsoleting "v1" and rendering it useless. It's their nuke option. They had two years to think of problems in their implementation, saying "ah, if we made the coin now, we'd do that in a different way". The potential for improvement should be significant for a reboot or a new coin by the same devs.
As I see it, having MRO take everything and upsetting the BCN devs by capitalizing on their work can backfire big time as they might "nuke" the clones and go with a V2 which heavily improves on V1. And then it's game over.
Personally I'm on the Dark train, but have some MROs just in case - keeping in mind the above. I like the prospects of the anonymous market in general, and I am holding more than one anon coins so as to be properly positioned and hedged, but the fact that MROs fortune is dependent on what BCN developers will do (because they are the innovators and first movers) is unsettling for escalating any investment.