I see the old single-dac-chains as potentially having innovations that get 3rd party Devs recognized by SuperDACs (like BTS/Ethereum). Is there a flaw to my logic here? Why wouldn't 3rd party Devs want to develop on those smaller, less competitive DACs?
Well, for one, funding would likely be a bigger issue on the smaller, less competitive DACs. They either need to have earned a huge amount of money from an ICO to fund all the development they need, which we are slowly moving away from in favor of the dilution model, or they would need the stake of their DAC to have a high enough market cap to fund development (either by selling off some of their initial genesis stake or even better getting paid with stakeholder approval through dilution of the stake). If the market cap of the DAC is puny it will be too difficult to generate high enough salaries to pay the developers.
If the developers are creating technology that can bring value to BTS stakeholders, then it would be smart for the BTS stakeholders to pay those developers through BTS dilution (which they can afford to do because of a much higher market cap) to create the technology and add that value to BTS.
In this way, it would essentially be a way to lower barrier to entry for talented Devs who have no other way of proving themselves to a broader community.
If the devs hasn't proved themselves yet, then people probably wouldn't donate to an ICO to allow the devs to carry out their vision. They would also likely dump the stake that the devs generated through snapshots because of lack of confidence in the devs. A dev first needs to prove himself/herself. If they have some background that would make BTS stakeholders think they can actually pull it off, they can appeal to stakeholders and get hired as a developer paid for by BTS dilution. As they start proving themselves they can get paid more to grow their team and accomplish their grander vision. If they don't even have enough credentials to get elected by stakeholders, then I guess they have to first build that reputation by contributing to the open source project for free.
If some devs have proven themselves (say through the above actions), they might have gained enough of a reputation to then launch their own competing DAC if they really wanted to take it along a different path. Ideally BitShares as a platform with Turing complete scripts would be flexible enough to allow them to accomplish their goals within the blockchain, but if for some reason their vision requires fundamental changes that are incompatible with BTS, then they have to launch their own chain. Their reputation can then allow them to get the necessary funding through an ICO, or if they don't want to deal with the legal issues with that, they could even snapshot BTS (and potentially other tokens) and still have enough strong hands who believe in their vision to not dump the genesis stake.
Your main points are again about not being able to secure funding and about technical superiority (my devs are smarter than your devs). I'm afraid your trapped in the paradigm of the "profitable DAC", which is not applicable in every situation. Doge did not ascend to the place it currently holds with any development or funding. If I say "no crypto can possibly succeed without fulfilling requirements A and B" and there is an existing crypto that is literally the polar opposite of requirements A and B, then I need to take a step back and think about what I am saying.
The requirements you've outlined are fine, and they may lead to a wildly successful DAC that meets a particular need or fulfills a particular application nicely. The problem I have is that you've closed your mind to the possibility that alternative business models exist and that you lose nothing by stopping this pointless battle against openness, competition, and diversity. Let me distill it for you again:
You believe:
1) PoW distribution is not the best method of allocation.
2) A DAC cannot succeed without a solid funding model.
3) A DAC cannot succeed without strong developers and technical superiority.
I believe:
1) Without diverging from the topic, most people in the crypto space disagree with you on point #1.
2) A good currency and sharedropping coin CAN succeed
without technical superiority.
3) The most important attributes of this coin are: (i) fair distribution, (ii) strong scarcity (non-inflationary), (iii) efficiency and secuirty (DPOS).
Our views mostly differ on our marketing and business strategy. Both may work within a given niche or application. The difference is that I'm not railing against your idea saying that it will never work. Even worse, you have literally nothing to lose but everything to gain if I am right. Just a shame...