I've been watching recent drama at some of the other "self-governing" crypto (GRC, HODL, and of course the DAO) and I've come to think the risk of poison-pill attack is higher than usually assumed.
Normally, we think that coin-holders (MN-holders in particular) would never vote against their own self-interest, but that hides some subtle variants. For example, what if their perceived self-interest did not match reality - they think they are making a good choice but are not? We also tend to assume that Bad Guys would have to invest so much to buy significant influence that it would not be worth their while.
At those other coins, something like the following happened. A smallish group, very sure of its position, lobbies for a change. A vote eventually occurs, and the small but high-energy group wins. The coin's trajectory changes. People who did not participate for whatever reasons, or who were on the losing side of the vote, react in the usual ways - they drop out, they complain, they rethink their position, they go along - whatever. My point is that a relatively small group of high-energy people can, and does, change policy. This pattern is routine in real-life politics and in corporate battles.
So a coin changes direction, and there is no way of being certain up-front whether the coin will thrive or fail as a result, no matter how strong one's opinions may be. Mr Market decides in time.
Back to Bad Guys and poison pills - presumably there are or will be small high-energy groups of Bad Guys trying to influence changes of direction in any self-governing coin. From time to time they will succeed in changing a coin's direction. Their changes may or may not give the results they want - they may backfire - but sometimes they will make a coin change direction in such a way that the coin never recovers.
The fix to this is not to abandon self-governance - any mode of decision-making risks making bad decisions. Neither is the fix to have extra layers of decision-makers as is usually done in the political realm (House and Senate or Commons and Lords, for example). The flaws in such systems are well-known. I have no fix to offer, I'm just noting a vulnerability, based on observing recent adventures with other coins. Possibly - possibly - the fix is to be sure that all decisions can be re-visited at reasonable intervals, and that most changes can be undone without forking to a new brand name. Bad Guys can exploit this kind of mechanism too, of course. There will always be Bad Guys or Good Guys who guess wrong. The challenge is to minimize damage.
For me as a coin-holder, none of this matters at a deep level. I just add to my supply or sell according to my perception of whether the coin direction change was in my interests. (I recently divested half-a-million of one-of-the-above, suppressing emotion as best I could). For a given coin though, a direction change can be brilliant or fatal or somewhere in between. A Dev risks a lot when he lets "his baby" become self-governing.
I'm still very happy with Dash's direction, in case it's not obvious.
