I was going to post something earlier along these lines.

There were anonymity coins before DRK, but Darkcoin has put anonymity on the map.

Plenty of people have made quite a bit of money off the media attention given to Darkcoin. All the FUDsters that come here promoting their scams and pretend clones forget that they are profiting from the work done here. They would do better supporting DRK to benefit financially from borrowed brand association.

The rise of DRK has been as much about the community as it has been about the underlying push by the Dev team. Props to everyone.