is the coin dead or not?
Blockchain is still alive.
But, as many times here, there are confusions, made by minergate. It is all their fault.
Dashcoin have two blockchains. Original DSH and (wrong) double spent minergate DMG chain.
Today, even minergate does not support their own chain.
Communitypool.org decided to support minergate DMG chain.
To prevent any confusion, I suggest to communitypool.org to use this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2298557.0Or make new thread.