I'm curious why you ask which features are important to the crypto community.  In my view, the focus on miners is probably doing a lot to hold back real innovation.  I view cryptocurrencies as being kind of like languages, in that no matter how good they are technically, their value/utility is really tied to the number of people who can be convinced to use them.  What I see in the alt-coin world is a bunch of people trying to further refine Esperanto while English (bitcoin) continues its dominance.  I do mine them, but only because some people are willing to trade BTC for them.