I've been looking lately into NXT, eMunie and Ethereum; I still have to wrap my head around the details, but from what I can gather so far all of these seem rather solid propositions in paper.
In practice though... I couldn't help but notice that they all share the following:
Premine: a small stake of the total economy is distributed among founders and friends or otherwise distributed arbitrarily to other people
Funding & IPO: a portion of the premine is sold for funding purposes on release; prices are fixed and set by the devs on said IPOs.
Operating like a company: It's seems pretty glaring that the focus is not so much on creating a currency but on creating a sustainable business for the founders, developers and early-early adopters.
By contrast, successful cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and later Litecoin had no premine and no IPO or funding; they were just open-for-all experiments that grew, not cryptocurrency-businesses. Granted times have changed, and IPOs might make sense now since we know cryptos can work and everyone wants to be aboard the next Bitcoin, but still. This all sounds too much like Ripple, which as far as I'm concerned was a flop.
Am I too conservative in thinking that all of these new cryptocurrencies are doomed to fail despite their technical merits?
No, you're not too conservative. The fact is, many people are turned off by IPO's and Premines for a good reason, with an IPO or a Premine, only a handful of people get A LOT of coins, making it absurdly unfair. Just look at NXT's IPO, a little over 70 stakeholders got 90% of the NXT in circulation and the price of NXT is extremely low despite the fact that it's "innovative" just because of it's horrible distribution. It's stupid.
You don't need IPO's or Premines. Cryptos aren't companies, they're currencies.
Any coin with IPO or Premine, I'm out, not even gonna bother with.