Hmm, CryptoNote doesn't seem to be a currency at all. It seems to be a code base behind other currencies as much as I can tell. CryptoNoteCoin seems to be a ref

Hmm, CryptoNote doesn't seem to be a currency at all. It seems to be a code base behind other currencies as much as I can tell. CryptoNoteCoin seems to be a reference implementation that isn't "real". The discussion is when did a coin - fork into a different coin and become more successful than it's predecessor? Because if it's "well, never... yet!", then the argument that "development is centralized but that's ok because you can just fork it if you don't like the developer's plans" - is effectively a lie. Also, while I probably know way less than you on this overall, I do know Monero has seen successful because it's effective to be run as a scam on victim computers (mining malware) and on websites that use JS on your computer to mine coin. Almost all the web and malware mines Monero. It gives me the impression as the least legitimate coin I can think of because of the number of times I've seen this.