Peercoin counts I think. Not sure if the POW side was new but the POS using coinage was ground breaking at the time.
Peercoin is based on Bitcoin although it incorporates a substantial amount of new code since it uses an all-new proof-of-stake algorithm. Think of it as being similar to how English looks like today. There are lots of French and Latin words but the basic structure is still Germanic.
Interestingly, I once read from somewhere that NXT basically lifted the whole PoS code from Peercoin at one point during its development although it's probably not true anymore. Can't seem to find the actual quote though...
http://mapofcoins.com/real innovation is scarce, from what I understand Monero is really a fork from Bytecoin, they have diverged from the initial implementation.
ofc everybody is free to stick with the 80% premined original abandonware (BCN)
Both coins have diverged in the months/years preceding their creation but Monero still stays pretty close to the reference implementation (as does Bytecoin).
Did the original BCN dev make much money out of his premine?
thats another problem with BCN and all other cryptonote coins (except Monero), no one knows who are the devs, or should I say "active" devs.
Anonymous/pseudyonymous devs are pretty common in the altcoin world. Bitcoin, Namecoin, NXT, NEM, Auroracoin, Peercoin, and Primecoin are examples of coins that once had or continue to have anonymous/pseudonymous devs. Monero has a development team of 7 people and 5 of these have chosen to remain pseudonymous. Its founder was also pseudonymous too:
Monero is not governed by any foundation or central body, but ongoing development, maintenance, and research is primarily directed and often funded by a core team of seven individuals.
Five members of the Core Team prefer to stay pseudonymous for the moment, but two of them are more public and have revealed their real identities...
Source:
http://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/peopleEmunie?
Still in beta and under development, so I don't know if it counts here. BTW the development started roughly in the same time as NXT, maybe a bit earlier.
Yeah, it's been in development for a very long time but there are only closed betas to show for it. I've heard that the sole developer is still working on it so the project isn't dead. It's a promising piece of tech if it ever does get released but I think most people have lost interest by now.