DRK Wallet is a gimmick IMO.

It's a client-side tool that lets you mix incidental amounts, not an institutionalised solution.

It's a product who's existence is motivated by a distaste for authority rather than the need for widespread corporate, personal and commercial privacy at a protocol level.

You say you "don't like" masternodes. I don't think it's a question of whether people like them or not, it's a question of what job are they doing and whether that job is justified. Darkcoin is a 2-tier network by design for some very good reasons. One of them is to retain full compatibility with the Bitcoin API, blockchain and commercial infrastructure.

Another is to decouple the "anon" development from the core blockchain. This is very important now that Bitcoin has prevailed over the alts in marketcap because the more it gains trust and value, the less people want it "f*cked about with" when they have large holdings.

De-coupling the anon from the core blockchain has allowed Darkcoin to make huge advances while preserving the core value of the monetary asset and not threatning it technologically.