i think u missunderstand the nature of POW mining as most people see it
mine altcoins is just a way to earn BTC
this means a high percentage of POW coin rollout is direct sell pressure
the nature of POS that coins produce coins give buy coins and stake coins sense
and there is absolute nothing wrong with a codebase that forked from bitcoin 0.8x
it can pretty easy be upgraded to 0.9x too (and be honest what bitcoin ability that 0.9x didnt have already u need for ERC u will find none)
a codetree reach sooner or later a state where he is so different from bitcoin base that it have to be seen as a own tree
and that is true for PPC/NVC tree which all the POW/POS hybrid coins are based on
if u go POW the best advice i can give u is to make the POW coinrollout as low as possible
trust me 95% of POW miners dont care for the coin just the BTC they can sell the coin for
and ERC is not in a state to counter that constant sellpressure
to have more different people involved at ERC POW mining isnt helping at all
what u need is investors not miners
investors buy miners sell
its that easy