Indisputibly so.  I consider dark to be shady, however.  I sold out of drk and moved to xmr for three primary reasons: (1) CN protocol allows me to actually control the size of my anonymity set, and I have confidence that the set will hold; not so drk.  (2) P&D/premine/ponzi factors are beyond my tolerance level in drk.  (3) Snake oil crypto claims raise my hackles.  I'm just not going to trust my life and treasure to drk' s protocols.  Great coin if you love forks, however.

I don't think anyone advocates xmr more strongly than I do.  I am taking my own medicine, and I don't want anyone else to get sick either.  It definitely benefits me if others adopt XMR, but I strongly believe that it will benefit them as well, as long as they don't own more than they can hold in strong hands.  

It isn't the leading coin with privacy claims, in terms of market cap.  It isn't the first cryptonote protocol coin.  It isn't the most user friendly coin by a nautical mile.  But it does have a balance of factors which convince me that it is the leading candidate to supply the net with private liquidity for years to come.  In areas where it is weak, it is good enough, and improving.  In areas where it is strong, it is distinguished from its competitors by the honesty and frankness of its development team, it's open-source ethos, its fair launch, its methodical, un-hyped progress, in a well-planned and prioritized process, and the size and growth of its hashing infrastructure.

I really do think that slow and steady can win this race.  It's already good enough for technically aware people to use, and it won't take long for it to be good enough for anyone who is comfortable with bitcoin today to use it.  How long it will take before it is suitable for mainstream use, I dare not venture -- years, I would say, since that is a very high bar of usability (think iPod).  But it has all it needs now to get there in due time.