I'm sad to see the decline of Quark Coin. Quark was one of the best altcoin designs, and I say that as a fellow coin designer. It's sad to see the developer losing interest in the coin, but in a way, inevitable.
There's a mindset in the altcoin community that developers should not be incentivized - many miners expect developers to pour in long development hours for little or no reward - it's naive and ultimately detrimental to the success of an altcoin.
There seems to be a few ways to incentivize development -
1. Rely on developer enthusiasm (Quarkcoin and countless others) - Works only for a short time
2. Large coin holders collaborate and fund development (Bitcoin) - Works successfully, but requires enlightened owners to be heavily involved
3. Premine/Instamine (Stunts growth of coin as is viewed negatively by community, can cause pump'n'dump)
4. Postmine (Where reward for dev is specified in later blocks. Untried?)
5. Secret Mine (Where developer engineers a secret way to mine cheaply at launch YAC? Litecoin?) - Works but is disreputable - how far can you trust devs that do this?
6. Owners Vote (Tried in MemoryCoin) - Failed due to tragedy of the commons - owners voted to receive coins as interest
Actually I still think 'Owners Vote' might be workable with the right parameters, and I'm considering trying again but interested to know if there are other ways to incentivize developers, and crucially to successfully replace them if they quit (or go on strike!
)