My thoughts are bitcoin litecoin and a bunch of alts are in fact first-generation cryptocurrency. They were only experiments after all, with open blockchains, slow and hot and an utter waste of such network strength.
To compete in today's market a coin has got to do a unique function such as fill a niche for cyber anonymity like Darkcoin or fill a need for humanity such as netcoin, gridcoin, etc.
My addition for a second generation cryptocurrency: Darkcoin
Darkcoin's niche is security through anonymity and scarcity through a 22,000,000 total supply.
Release date: 11PM EST, 18th January 2014 / No premine
Specifications
Super secure hashing algorithm: 11 rounds of scientific hashing functions (blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa, cubehash, shavite, simd, echo)
Block reward is controlled by: 2222222/(((Difficulty+2600)/9)^2)
CPU/GPU mining
Block generation: 2.5 minutes
Difficulty Retargets using Dark Gravity Wave
Est. ~22M Max Coins
Superior Transaction Anonymity using DarkSend: Release Candidate 1 on MainNet
Coin Information
Darkcoin is the first privacy-centric cryptographic currency with anonymous block transactions powered by DarkSend. We currently have a fully functional public Release Candidate for DarkSend, see Downloads below.
Darkcoin now has a new kind of hybrid reward system similar to POW with POS. Those who run masternodes being rewarded via 10% of the mining rewards. Masternodes must put up at least 1000 collateral to run, and yet are paid for the work they perform.
Darkcoin uses a new chained hashing algorithm approach, with many new scientific hashing algorithms for the proof-of-work. This is so that the processing distribution is fair and coins will be distributed in much the same way Bitcoins were originally. ASICs will be much more difficult to make for these algorithms and should take years.
Darkcoin is the coin that introduced Dark Gravity Wave (DGW) to adjust the difficulty and protect the network from large fluctuations in the difficulty.
With chained hashing, high end CPUs give an average return similar to that of GPUs. Another side effect of the algorithm is GPUs run at about 30% less wattage than scrypt and 30-50% cooler.
Darksend will be fully integrated in the system this month of May 2014. After which point, Darkcoin goes dark!
Masternodes promise to provide superior transaction anonymity compared to all existing cryptocurrencies on the market.
http://www.darkcoin.io/ <- Main website with wallet
http://cointrepid.com/darkcoin-faucet/ <-Faucet We are in need of donations! Try it! Darkcoin is faster then e-mail!
https://darkcointalk.org/ <- Unofficial Forum
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/cryptsy/drkbtc <-Charts and graphs from BitcoinWisdom
http://bitinfocharts.com/darkcoin/ <- Information on % and $, BitInfoCharts
https://www.mintpal.com/market/DRK/BTC <- markets
https://www.facebook.com/Darkcoin <-facebook
https://twitter.com/DarkcoinCrypto <- twitter
http://drk.coin-lab.com/ http://mining.darkcointalk.org/index.php <- Mining pool options.
