There are thousands of altcoins out there, but when the great winnowing occurs only the best will be left in the store. Ethereum will be one, as it has utility outside of the currency and has already proven itself to some extent. Maybe Lightcoin, Monero and Zcash will too. I don't know so much about the other more established cryptos so I'll stop that list there but there will be a few other survivors besides as the chaff is blown away.
But my money is on that perennial under-performer MAID. MaidSafeCoin is a token for Safecoin, the currency that will power the SAFE Network, ensuring its security and powering its internal market. Of course SAFE is not yet live, so it's a leap of faith to some extent, but the underpinnings are all in place: a strong team, a visionary leader, a passionate community and a proper attention to detail.
More than any other decentralized network since Bitcoin, it has the potential to disrupt the way the world works. It combines many of the most useful aspects of other projects e.g. SIA, IOTA, ZeroNet, IPFS, Golem into one coherent autonomous, secure, anonymous network - and without a blockchain in sight. At least that's the vision.
So Safecoin is really just a side effect of the creation of the next-gen internet, rather than an end in itself. By exacting a cost for spamming or otherwise attacking the network, and rewarding those who provide storage, bandwidth and compute it provides the lubrication for the network to run itself.
Long misunderstood as just decentralised storage or just another Freenet, recent articles show that more and more people are waking up to its potential. There's even a side project going on to integrate Tim Berners-Lee's Solid project with SAFE. A couple of articles recently caught my eye, written by people who obviously 'get it'.
The first is this article http://www.investinblockchain.com/what-is-maidsafe/ by Colin Adams of InvestInBlockchain.com. I'll reproduce the final paragraph.
Getting people to understand the radical implications of Maidsafe’s reformulated network architecture, encouraging adoption/app development and facing the technical difficulties of scale are all huge challenges.
But Irvine and his team have already shown they have grit and will be sticking around for the long haul.
As for Safecoin, it is another step further towards the decentralization of the monetary system. By combining a decentralized framework with Bitcoin’s decentralization monetary processes, a vibration has started — one that may shake the very bedrock of cryptocurrency.
I'd also like to point you to a couple of articles by AR on Medium which are currently garnering a lot of 'claps'. Get beyond the Buzzfeed headlines - there's some good stuff in there.
This Wee Scottish Firm Is Building A Solution To Net Neutrality — And It’s Completely Autonomous
https://medium.com/@A.Wheel/this-wee-scottish-firm-is-building-a-solution-to-net-neutrality-and-its-completely-autonomous-cd80b4b6d03f
and
Zzz’ Blockchain is Boring — The One and Only Truly Unique Cryptocurrency Is On Its Way
https://medium.com/@A.Wheel/zzz-blockchain-is-boring-the-one-and-only-truly-unique-cryptocurrency-is-on-it-s-way-51f4b8bca31d
Bye for now