The problem with this analysis is that it is too myopic and loaded to be instructive about how either of these technologies (DRK / Cryptonote) will play out ultimately.

There are loads of modern day services that the NSA can theoretically "snoop" which don't detract from their practical or market value. The best you can say is that there is unlikely to be any anonymous technology which is guaranteed 100% to be "unstoppable" - neither the cryptonote approach or the 2-tier one.

But that's not the point anyway. Most people are not terrorists on the run from the NSA. The NSA are unlikely to be spending zillions of dollars on capturing masternode logs (because they'd need EVERY last one - ALL of them to have a remote chance) and then another few million plus several weeks pouring over them attempting to trace a solitary few transactions.

Even if that were theoretically possible (which I don't accept it is) it's well beyond a practical level of financial privacy which is what the goal is here.

In fact, I picked DRK *because* of its 2-tier approach, not in spite of it. Once you accept that both technologies work "within a reasonable level of practical anonymity" then practical considerations have far more impact on value than the thinking up of hypothetical vulnerabilities.

This is where DRK scores many more points than Monero and is the reason why it's maintained and grown its 5x marketcap lead.

Firstly, redundancy. Whatever disparities exist between the quality of the 2 anonymity algos, these are blown away by the fact that Darkcoin supports a pre-emptive, multiple redundancy approach to anonymisation. Cryptonote has 1 shot at it and has to work EVERY TIME. That means that you've no way of mitigating the effect of statistics as time goes on. The Darkcoin methodology is consistent with, say, painting a room where you use 16 thin coats rather than 1 thick one that leaves blank patches. This is both a huge security advantage and a practical advantage because at the point of use, Darkcoin can work like any other currency and doesn't need any exceptions to regular APIs which support it.

Secondly, the 2-tier approach leads to a far more productive and secure development cycle because the legacy API layer that's compatible with the Bitcoin retail interface can be supported independently of changes to the anonymisation algos. We've already seen this where Darkcoin went from realtime anonymisation at the point of use (like Monero) to pre-emptive - a huge revision to the philosophy - with no disruption at all to the retail interface.

Thirdly - Darkcoin is fully compatible with Bitcoin. It basically IS bitcoin and can be deployed with most bitcoin infrastructure. This was a design priority right from the start and has been maintained ever since. Again, this is only possible due to the 2-tier architecture.

Fourthly - the flexibility that Darkcoin's architecture brings in terms of design options is immense compared to a coin who's transmission and anonymising properties are so inflexibly coupled into a single lump of code.

So I don't remotely agree with you that this represents a "Broken Architecture". That's the kind of antagonistic, emotive language that people use when they have an axe to grind and want to appeal to an audience who don't have the technical depth to make a proper appraisal of the criticism. If you really want to have it taken seriously then put your point to the Darkcoin development team and have them post an appropriate response.

As for your Prisoner's Dilemma, that again is another piece of highly selective theorising. In fact the evidence in no way, shape or form supports your contention that it applies in this case. As you probably already know, there are few cases in any crypto-community of such high levels of constructive co-operation amongst peers. Masternode holders are not in "competition" with each other - they all share equally in a portion of the mining supply. Yes - their share goes up as the masternode population reduces, but it doesn't automatically follow that they'll start carrying out suicidal attacks on their own cryptocurrency network just to garner some hundredth of a percentage more yield. The loss in terms of market value from such behaviour would infinitely offset any marginal gain in coin share.

So the phrase "architecturally broken" is unjustified and I hereby request that the OP remove it from the citation at the start of the thread. Some of your points may be fair in the context of "vulnerabilities" but all advanced technologies have those. It's not a question of possessing or not posessing vulnerabilities, it's a question of what has the optimal balance of vulnerabilities against practical advantages.

Here's one for Monero which I won't do it the injustice of calling it "broken", simply a "vulnerability"....

.....if Darkcoin's algo ever gets "hacked", i.e. if a successful trace back to a sender of an anonymised transaction occurs, then only that one transaction is affected. The rest of the entire blockchain history is still safe.

On the other hand, if a solution is ever found for cryptonote encryption algorithm then the ENTIRE BLOCKCHAIN can be sprung with that one can opener. Cryptonote is therefore a timebomb. Your transaction might be anonymous today but not in 5 years time.

Be careful what you refer to as "architecturally broken".