more promising pastures (which also provided counter-party risk protection as a minimum.)
Which ones are those?
I don't know of any.
I don't either. I've been remiss in studying alts because there are just so fucking many of them.
My strong sense is that NONE of them are really biting off the problems that are important to me.
...
That's very likely true. The alts that have the most traction are probably Ripple and Ethereum (based on pre-release hype, obv). Ripple weakens decentralization (and is 100% pre-mined), so is really only interesting as a banking fintech tech-startup play (which is where it's getting traction), not a store of value.
Ethereum adds a ton of questionable complexity. Does not seem up your alley.
Smooth might have a thing or two to say about Monero, though, which supports a pure-anon niche that bitcoin never will.