My opinion is the future hangs on what the hackers can create and or the whales can seed fund. The middle class is dependent on our success or failure. Once you put the tools out there, the middle class and get involved in finding a myriad of uses for them. There are 1000s of really great programmers who are no where near the altcoin scene. I suppose because it such a crapshoot. It is too new and crypto is outside the domain knowledge of most programmers (including myself a year ago, I had to learn fast but at least I have some math background to draw on).

There are not nurturing venture capitalists investing in the block chain experiments, e.g. Idealab. As far as I know with the exception of Ethereum, the venture capital is pouring into Bitcoin related startups only.

My only plea to all readers is recognize (or disagree) that Bitcoin is not going to set us free as we had hoped. So please remain open minded. And hope some hackers are willing to risk everything (such as myself receiving no income for years and surviving on the fumes remnants of my past savings).

I think I am aware of what all other capable developers are doing in the altcoin scene. I have commented already on all of them in this thread except eMunie. I haven't looked at eMunie in a long-time, but when I was evaluating the Decrits proposed design last year I briefly looked at the vague specification of eMunie and I am fairly certain is going no where fast. Sorry to eMunie fans, that is my technical opinion. If you want details you can do Google search on "site:bitcointalk.org AnonyMint eMunie". Essentially PoS delegation strategies devolve to reputation, centralization, and fiat.