[...] this beta risks being just a testnet++. Not many people will transfer their coins into it (it is not a reasonable investment strategy), and without much aggregated value, would it really have enough manpower behind it?
well rather than the get rich quick, get in early motivation for the me-too alts, the idea is that you get into it because you want the features it provides. eg if zerocoin used the model.
Now thats not as strong an incentive as make-money-fast pyramid speculation on frankly long-term hopeless me-too alts. But if the idea is that it is going to become the new bitcoin in say 1 year, once the features are well validated. Then it would help reduce concern of being stuck.
The reverse swap depends on demand. If people dont care about the new features they wont use it.
I would think something like maaku & jtimon's freimarkets would be a good candidate for doing this way. Freimarket is not related to frecoin - its a native coloring and smart contract proposal.
If there was a technical way to ensure people can get their beta coins converted back into stable coins at the same rate (i.e., pegging), then things could be different. But I don't see how could that be possible.
technically it could be done, (bitcoin could accept coin moving in the other direction) however it imports risk into bitcoin main as a security defect in betacoin that allowed theft or forgery of coins, could then be transferred into bitcoin.
Once the beta is over, the remaining coins would be bulk oved in a hard fork and beta wold become main, and a new beta started. eg on a yearly cycle. like fedora and redhat enterprise linux or linux kernel stable and latest etc.
Is there an easier explanation somewhere, that could help technical people without a background in cryptography research to grasp the concept?
see earlier in tis thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175156.msg2378622#msg2378622and another few posts after it where I tried to explain it a bit.
Adam