> the decoy based privacy protocols Monero uses are not really private at all.

This is simply not true, otherwise you should present real evidence. It is not perfect, but nothing ever will be, and Monero continues to move forward and use the best technology available. Research continues, and they hope to move away from "decoy based protocols" altogether eventually, but the tradeoffs have so far been too great. Unlike bitcoin, it is able to do large changes, since there is a completely different development culture

>Unlike bitcoin, it is able to do large changes, since there is a completely different development culture

Can be read as: a 'relatively' small group of people control the protocol to such a level that arbitrary changes can be enacted with relative ease.

An example that comes to mind is Ethereum, which is essentially controlled by a single developer aided by a few others. When a bug in a contract would have cost many people a significant amount, the lead developer lead the charge (to the applause of almost all) in forking the chain.

I haven't looked at Monero in enough detail to confirm this, but your statement is not exactly a selling point. Having decentralization to the point that it becomes hard for developers to force through changes, should be a feature... not a bug.

You have a great point and for this reason Monero should be viewed differently. It is not bitcoin. However, the technology is just not at the point where you can have a protocol that is fixed in stone, and bitcoin is not something that I think is good for the world because it is a dangerous tool of mass surveillance which you can't fix without fundamental changes.

>Having decentralization to the point that it becomes hard for developers to force through changes

This is happening to Monero too over time, as the community grows. I expect it will continue to become more difficult to gain consensus over time. There is, at least, many developers and no 'leader' figure like Vitalik

I’m glad to hear that Monero is still on the right track.

Are there coins that learned from the bungled launch of zcash and did things right according to what was valued by the community? Like private by default, avoiding perceived trust issues by being more above board, making ASIC resistance a priority, adopting a public irreverence of compliance, not being associated with people who worked with untrusted organizations and so on?

There are some Zcash forks with iffy dev support and no market traction. The problem is the kind of cryptography you need to do something like Zcash is very very very hard to get right. Zcash actually got the tech right and handled the issues they hit well. They just didn't do a good job with reputation outside of tech.

No one else as done the same tech yet themselves. A few things have launched and allegedly plan to add a privacy layer (Mina, Celo). But actually building that kind of tech is a lot harder than reputation management or standard blockchains.

It's still an open playing field.

Bitcoin gold has a asic resistant pow, but all the same btc issues so far as I know, because it’s a btc fork.