How does staking interest/masternode payouts compare with DASH? Seems like they have incentivized masternodes quite well, but they have larger cost barrier to setting up a masternode. How do we replicate and improve on this with low market cap, possibly transitioning into larger market cap?
Perhaps larger collateral requirements could also be considered. Or maybe addition of supernodes, if necessary to achieve the anon "air gap" would have higher requirements with higher payout. As the POS schedule is long term, if supernodes are likely requirement to achieve true anon then maybe this should be considered and factored in to long term schedule.
DASH per PoW block:
- 45% goes to masternodes
- 45% goes to miners
- 10% goes to decentralised budget system
1000 DASH is needed per MN meaning 16.4 BTC is needed right now to create 1 MN!
Right now, less than 0.1 BTC is needed to create 1 DNET MN. Pretty cheap I'll say.

As for your other questions... Big portion is up to the devs making DNET code more unique I guess.
Followed by creation of better infrastructure (web sites, wallet UI/UX etc) and market it really well.
Supernodes is a possibility and is something which I think s3v3nhacks already mentioned already?
Not sure if that is still the method that will be used as it could result in less decentralization.