CoinHoarder, both of your suggestions have been talked about somewhat recently.
Suggestion 1) Changing PoW
https://forum.getmonero.org/9/work-in-progress/87822/continued-funding-for-postdoctoral-researcher-surae-noether-me (also discusses multisig)
Snippit of the quote
POW-Difficulty Replacement Contest. Some time in December, I am going to formalize an FFS "idea" to open up a multiple-round contest for possible replacements for our proof of work game. The first round would have a 3- or 6-month deadline. Personally, I would love it if this FFS could have an unbounded reward amount. If the community is extremely generous, we could easily whip up a large enough reward to spur lots and lots of interest across the world. *SNIP*
Suggestion 2) Adding Multisig, lightning Network and Atomic Swaps.
Multisig is in the works currently on GitHub and lightning/atomic swaps mentioned on twitter.
https://twitter.com/fluffypony/status/913667796025921536Q. Forgive me if I sound too noob, but would something like atomic swaps be viable between say. your project and monero?
A. Yes - thats why were both working to get Lightning 100% working on both Monero and Litecoin