If someone wants to take over the development role this would be a good time to step up. The code and a pool is still available.
Hahaha, so someone would work, work, work, then the old dev comes and dumps his 100m+ coins and ruins everything? HEXX coin takeover was almost ruined by return of the old dumpers, it's impressive that the price is not 100sat for now.
Future development is possible after hardfork or any code changing, for example. The decision is always there, if there is a desire. And the code must be changed anyway, because of the FPGA threat.