Quote from: Luke-Jr on July 11, 2013, 08:11:41 PM

Quote from: spirale on July 11, 2013, 08:01:29 PM

Quote from: Luke-Jr on July 11, 2013, 07:38:42 PM

as I'm pretty sure Primecoin is a scamcoin

Care to explain?

There's no reason for people to adopt it.
If the prime POW proves to be demonstratably better than SHA256d, it could be adopted by Bitcoin with a hardfork.
Things like this (enhancement to a specific technical detail) should be done as testnet branches - as proposed changes to Bitcoin.

Without a hope of adoption, Bitcoin and forks function in a pyramid: when people get tired of it, the ones stuck with the coins in the end lose out.
Bitcoin is different because its innovation makes it possible to achieve a status quo where everyone wins (by having a usable decentralized currency).
Any new system would need to have a viable way to compete with Bitcoin (ie, something Bitcoin couldn't just adopt as an improvement).

Examples of altcoins that don't function as scams:

Tonal Bitcoin: Compatible with BTC, uses the same blockchain. Whether it succeeds or fails, nobody loses value so long as Bitcoin as a whole doesn't fail.
Namecoin: Not a currency, but a domain name system.
PPCoin: Uses proof-of-stake instead of proof-of-work; arguably this is so fundamentally different that Bitcoin could not adopt it. Note that last I heard, PPCoin was being used as a scamcoin despite this, however, and there were some major problems with centralization/security tradeoffs.
Freicoin: Features demurrage, which trades the "why spend it?" problem for a new "why acquire it?" problem. It would violate Bitcoin's social contract to make an economic change like this.

The only reason Bitcoin would hardfork is the security of SHA256. There is no "better" in any other coin which would make Bitcoin switch to any other solution, so your criteria which is scamcoin and which is not is completely wrong.