Without GUI, adoption will remain sluggish. With sluggish adoption, not only will price be pressured, but more importantly - and this is a coin killer - the emission will run its course to the point that XMR will considered to be a "community premine" despite all our good heroic efforts.
Since changing the emission also can be considered to be a premine of sorts, we are between a rock and a hard place with (yet) no solutions that would have the unanimous support of everybody.
I can also be wrong concerning the future perception of "community premine".
It will take more than a GUI wallet to increase adoption. You need tools that allow companies to use your coin in real business scenarios. You need a way for those companies to get out of monero and into fiat so they can pay employees, taxes, cost of goods sold, etc... There's an entire host of things that are needed to make this possible and they MUST be easy to use. The only thing a monero GUI will be good for right now is a reason to pump the price. That's it.
Besides tools (any coin can do this), I think the key to long term adoption will be a stable market value. Wild price swings and uncertain markets will only keep real companies from investing long term in a coin and reduce the number of them willing to accept it as payment. I think this is the problem with litecoin. At it's high, ltc was like $45+/- and now its 4.50+/-. Its 1/10th the price of the all time high. Bitcoin on the other hand has seen 1/3-1/2 of its all time high in this same time period. Had the GOX fiasco not happened, we probably would not of seen this much of a decline.
Where the heck is this "community premine" coming from. I've never seen this term used. I understand what you're saying when you say it but why? Who has claimed that monero is "community premine"? I think you are putting a label on something that does not exist to help push your agenda.
1st year is 39%, after 4 years it is 86%.
I would much rather see us at <50% for 3-4 years, because a fully mined coin when there is no meaningful adoption (10s of millions of users at least) is likely to be superseded by a fork of the same, which is perceived as "more legitimate" since it is "not premined".
I don't think inflation is "good" but I find it hard to retain legitimacy in the view of the future generations without it. Crypto is not gold. Gold cannot be forked, crypto can. And has. And will.
Flat emission curve may also work, who knows?
I doubt Monero will ever see "10s of millions of users at least" but in an attempt to not crush your dreams, if monero were to see 10s of millions of users, inflation would be good. With a max supply of around 18 million coins, that leaves very few coins to be had for a lot of people. Especially considering that you own such a large %. I guess with 10s of millions of users you can be considered a "community premine".
For long term support and growth of the coin, a reversal of the emission curve would be a better option. If monero's user base was to expand, it would benefit the community and late adopters to have more coins available later in the game than earlier. I do find it a bit funny how many of you consider DRK to be a 'shitcoin' or a 'instamined scam' yet you also like to use it for comparisons. You should do your own thing. Do something different.
I'll use generic numbers here to make my point easier.
So let's say we have 500 users now and 10 coins per block. 1 year from now we have 1000 users and 5 coins per block. Earlier adopters "community premined" monero and those that come to the community later are getting the "short end of the stick". A fairer emissions curve would be to have 5 coins per block now and 10 coins per block later. The only benefit of a decrease in coins over time is it rewards early adopters. With a decrease in emissions over time you are not supporting an increase in users. You are not encouraging the community to grow. You are actually supporting a decrease in users. Why do you think most altcoins do this? After the initial influx of users and the traditional pump and dump, many users leave and very few new users join. A decrease in emissions relates to this trend. If you truly believe monero's user base will increase, you should consider increasing emissions with the increase of the user base.
Reversing the emissions curve could help to even out the market over time if adoption increase. If adoption does not increase, the price could fall with the increase in emissions. I guess the question here is, how much do you believe in the coin and the increase in adoption?