I agree, on paper the monero/zerocoin approach is more solid for anon although not without other issues, e.g. bloat. I would say some future Zerocash implementation is the best theoretical coin at present.
Darkcoin has a ton of bloat. In fact, if you compare a set of DarkSend transactions with a Monero transaction at a high mixin of, say, 20 you will notice that Monero's reduced scripting size makes it quite a bit smaller. If Darkcoin users start using DarkSend all the time instead of just occasionally you will experience phenomenal bloat.
I still don't know what your point is. DRK has native instant TX today...I think the market is buying this feature. It's a good feature
Just like GreenAddress it still requires trust, and it's still open to malleability attacks.
Your point being?
Again it's a good feature - the devs can roll back new releases. It doesn't ultimately undermine the trustless nature of the coin, it just provides a level of control for new releases.
I don't think you understand what "trustless" means. Without "trustless"-ness a cryptocurrency is neither safe nor fungible. Bitcoin is being picked up by forward-thinking institutions and corporations because they understand this trustless nature. They would never trust something like this where someone else controls a kill switch, not when they have a trustless alternative.
DRK has good features, but XMR people just want to attack them and never provide a balanced view. I support both coins and try to have a balanced view....more of that needed here I think if crypto is going to go mainstream.
It has reimplementations of features that are already available in Bitcoin, nothing innovative or unique. You can CoinJoin in Bitcoin, you can instantly transact using GreenAddress.it, all available right now. That is not an attack, that is a balanced view. Moreover, the lack of rigour in the implementation is disconcerting at best. Designing decentralised systems is hard (human instinct is to trust "voting" or some form of perceived supermajority, which is almost always easily exploitable). Designing robust decentralised systems from an "assumed malice" perspective is harder still (Darkcoin is designed from an "assumed trust" perspective). Designing anti-fragile systems is an art on its own. Monero is VERY far from being anti-fragile, but every day we work towards it.