what DarkCoin does is highly centralized because the software is closed— you can't get more centralized than closed source.

"masternodes" does not sound like something decenteralized, it sounds like something that creates a small chokepoint which could be used to deanonymize its users, like a server based CoinJoin but worse since you have to hold a huge pile of coins to run a server.

Bytecoin (and its forks... Monero, Fantomcoin, etc.) are actually working implementations of much stronger privacy, decenteralized in their implementation, all released under a good open source license.

From what I can tell the only purpose DarkCoin serves is to depress me about the state of humanity.

Dash is perfectly described by gmaxwell in the post above: a lot of harmful garbage and dysfunctional software. My Dash is going to be sold over the next few days. I refuse to a cryptocurrency where the fanboys imagine that cryptography is uneccessary. What a stupid thing to say.