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.
There are certainly alts, but they are pretty much the same as bitcoin unless you are getting down in the weeds of various implementation details (but given your reply, perhaps I misunderstood what you meant and you are indeed interested in those technical differences).
That's what I meant by not knowing about more "promising pastures" that lack counterparty risk (other than cryptocurrencies).
My interest is and always has been in straight-up 'reserve currencies'. Ultra light-weight and quite high latency (or low block frequency which is more familiar to folks.) Probably kept lite way by kicking people out who don't maintain a minimum and cleaning up after them (by trashing whatever mess they've left.) It would very deliberately NOT be for everyone. Those who cannot stand the heat (which would vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) are a liability. The only goal would be to provide backing to more user-friendly solutions (much as sidechains are trying to be.) The value would be that it would be ultra-difficult to put out of action which is what I see as the most important aspect of a reserve currency.
It would be designed to protect against a dedicated and persistant attack using all means available (now and in the foreseeable future) by internet network providers who I do not and cannot trust. By being small, this would include operating steganographically at a minimum, but in operation it would foster the growth of functionality not even making use of the global internet at all. Private links and 'IPoAC'-like data channels would be rewarded so they would maintain a reasonable representation.
I've seen nothing like this and nobody showing any interest which surprises me a little. Oh well.
I'm ambivalent about anonymity. It's got advantages and disadvantages for the goals of a solution such as I'm imagining, though probably more of the former.