You need to factor in the real world relationships that will drive adoption- in the case of Litecoin, Charlie Lee is well positioned in his relationship with Coinbase and obviously BTC China via his brother. You can bet that these ties will count for something as mass adoption begins. I don't know about the developers of Dodge- so I can't comment, but I do know that despite being decentralised, the people inherently connected with cryptos will count for something.
I hear you, but 1) btcchina is no longer the exchange with largest volume, 2) they missed the chance to take Litecoin to the next level back in November, when Max Keiser made his tweet on Litecoin to reach $50. If btcchina introduced Litecoin trading back then, in sync with Max's tweet and general enthusiasm for Litecoin, Litecoin would probably go to 0.1 ltc/btc and stay there and truely become the only second alt and gain a lot of user base.
But that opportunity is now lost, there is a bunch of some innovative, some not, alts now that are taking capital away from Litecoin. Whereas back a few months ago Litecoin was attracting most new users of altcoins, it's different now. New users of altcoins have been scattered over a bunch of altcoins like cockroaches over the kitchen table, seeing benefits of other alts. Its very doubtful they can now get together into just 1 altcoin.
I found the pic I looked for, yearly inflation for 2015-2020
