Interesting discussion. The spot-on "cargo cult coin" critique is devastating to the dev-update-hype driven coins like CLOAK/DARK/XC/BLACK/BTCD/etc.
About Frozencoins, can the same technique be applied incrementally/partially to provide for per-address withdrawal limits?
Withdrawal limits, as implemented by XCN, allow for the 'Holy Grail' functionality of trustless and secure zero-confirmation transactions.
It would be great for VIA to copy that killer application, to the extent possible without an account tree and unmalleable tx.
in the case of blackcoin, i dont think its all hype. they are creating good stuff over there in bithalo, blackhalo and nightrader. and they got invited in china for the okcoin/huobi conference. so prolly china is interested in their tech.