I'm sorry to say I think you are right on this and I used to be one of the biggest ether fans.

The DAO made me lose a lot of faith in the project.

The current token shenanigans aren't really helping to win me back either.

I also think the switch to CASPER, sharding, POS etc will lead to more splits in the community over time.

Further I don't think Vitalik is quite the genius we all believed he was. He is clever for sure but as I saw someone say on Twitter he doesn't really seem to have much knowledge of human behaviour or motivations and I would agree.

I would go as far as to say that there is a severe lack of understanding of human psychology and behaviour within the entire ethereum foundation.

This really started to become evident to me when I became involved in the DAO and they asked me to get involved as a mod.

Some of the things I heard then basically changed my opinion of the people that were at the centre of the whole ethereum movement.

Also despite people in the ethereum community mocking alternatives I think they do have certain advantages.

For example - JS is a lot easier to get developers for than Solidity and that ultimately might make those platforms more secure and more open to scrutiny.

Hope we are wrong but maybe not.