Look at it this way:
*Darkcoin appeared early 2014, no other coin or developer (with the exception of darkwallet for bitcoin) was even trying to achieve anonymity.
*Evan and the other devs managed to get anon working a few months later.
*In May 2014 people realized the value of anonymity, price exploded.
Pretty much the exact time that Darkcoin rise in value, an unknown coin(Bytecoin) and CryptoNote technology appears. They claim to have been active in the darknet since 2012(!!) yet the blockchain is smaller than monero's.
*The CryptoNote technology is highly sophisticated, and people speculate that it can have connections to NSA:
"Keccak hash has been chosen as a proof-of-work function in CryptoNote several months before it has been announced as SHA-3 hash function competition winner.
Using non-deterministic random in CryptoNote signatures might be a backdoor intentionally left by NSA in reference implementation." (from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryptoNote)
Since the release of Bytecoin/CryptoNote, many shitcoin-clones appeared. Compared to the developement Darkcoin has undergone, Monero is still just a clone.
Summary:
Since CryptoNote is developed by some strange, obscure group of people, there might be some backdoor:
"Using non-deterministic random in CryptoNote signatures might be a backdoor intentionally left by NSA in reference implementation."Darkcoin distribution is ultimately of no significance since it wasn't even anonymous at launch. There was no incentive for potential instaminers to hold their share.
All coins have more or less the same level of distribution:
Bitcoin Top 100 addresses own:
20.07% of total supplyLitecoin Top 100 addresses own:
45.37% of total supplyDarkcoin Top 100 addresses own:
27.52% of total supplyDogecoin Top 100 addresses own:
43.25% of total supplyhttps://bitinfocharts.com/