I don't see why a chain split is to be avoided ; I would say, on the contrary: the more it splits, the more different versions can compete in the market, and the better the outcome will be.   Yes, of course, speculative value will get lost, but speculative value is what kills this environment in any case, so the more speculators can bleed, the better, I would think.  Real usage is what would thrive it, speculative "to the moon" considerations is what is killing it.   I think real hard fork splits are the best way forward, to a myriad of different branches, with miriads of different properties.  In fact, in a certain way, alt coins do that already, but I think that it would be better, instead of starting new chains all the time, to fork off from existing ones, to have initial distributions which mean something.  After all, to get something going, it is much better to hand it out to a large existing audience than to try to win a new audience.