I found this post to be very informative and thought it could be for more people.
As a Darkcoin Core developer I want to take the chance and comment on some claims made in this thread. First of all I agree with everyone claiming there is no perfect solution yet. Dark wallet, Shared coin, Coin shuffle, Monero and, no, not even Darkcoin are perfect yet. Everyone claiming his solution is perfect, is simply trying to catch investors. But let me comment on some technical claims which I can prove wrong.
"Coinjoin is proved broken."
> Yes and no. The origininal idea of coinjoin was flawed in finding other people who want to send coins, to mix them just-in-time and broadcast them to the network. This is indeed broken, as it is very simple to simply match inputs, outputs and timestemps to track back transactions through the blockchain.
"Darkcoin is implementing a broken Coinjoin."
> No. This statement is reaching back to a time in the beginning of 2014 where Darkcoin was using just-in-time-coinjoin to create Darksend transactions. This system was poor implemented, hard to use (hardly found people to mix with) and - indeed - broken. But in may 2014 evan duffield introduced a totally new approach by implementing ahead-of-time mixing. You simply leave your wallet open and mix with other clients coins, you can do that 2 times, 4 times, 16 times, just mix your coins as much as you want. And as soon as you wish to send a transaction, your coins are already completely premixed and untracable. This is no magic and working with the darkcoin core reference client for more than half a year now.
"Darkcoin is closed source."
> No. Darkcoin was open sourced in september 2014.
"Masternodes are centralized point of failure."
> No. Masternodes are equal nodes in a p2p network with a special dedicated purpose. They are as decentralized as any other p2p application. Everyone is able to set up a masternode anywhere he likes. All you need is a 1000 DRK input to start the node, this is required to avoid the network getting attacked by massive amounts of vulnerable nodes. Currently there are around 2000 darkcoin masternodes running and securing the network, they are operated by alot of different users all over the world. Its a decentralized p2p network within the main darkcoin p2p network.
"Darkcoin does not provide anonymity."
> Yes and no. Darkcoin on its own is no stand-alone application for perfect privacy. Use it with caution, combine it with TOR, I2P, use OTR and PGP, and most important, stop using Windows. If you want true anonymity you will have to turn your live upside down. Darkcoin is a good contribution for transaction obfuscation and blockchain based privacy, but its not the proposed general problem solver. It's important to keep that in mind.
And now back to topic. Here are my comments on other coins.
LTC
> It's technically indeed a worthless clone. I personally dont see any point in why the world needs yet another coin. And I stopped believing in LTC after the devs said they dont need any new innovation. Sorry to see this big community going down the drain. Positive is that the huge team of developers and the old and big community contributed a lot of things which are also valuable for Bitcoin and the whole cryptocoin scene.
DOGE
> Was bringing cryptocoins to the masses. Using common memes and implemented as micropayment system it was indeed innovative, not technically, but in the scope of applications it was aiming at and developing for. The community of DOGE was awesome, and I think it will last some more time. But I cant predict how long. Technically, Dogecoin core is worthless, but keep in mind all the applications outside the core implementation built by the community again contributed alot to the cryptocoin scene.
PPC
> The only Proof-of-Stake coin that really lasted on the markets. It was technically ahead of its time and innovative. Not sure what the future will bring. Never heard anything new from that community after the primecoin launch (shows how innovative the PPC guys are!).
NMC
> I loved the coin from the beginning, but not sure if it will ever take off with it concept of a decentralized domain system. Its a great, innovative concept and by far ahead of its time again. I hope it will succeed in the long run.
