I can see how one could get discouraged. On the other hand, I don't know. Let's not mistake "shiny and new" for tangible technological progress beyond what Gridcoin already has. Nowadays there is a glut of shiny new tokens promising to do all sorts of things: decentralize X Y and Z, disrupt this or that industry, etc. And blockchain may well be capable of doing those things. But for now, most of these new tokens have yet to deliver on their promises. So something like SPARC looks all cool and awesome, but they haven't actually done much yet. With Gridcoin though, we already have our own unique blockchain protocol for rewarding distributed computing and scientific research in particular (even if the protocol is still in early stages). With this, we've also made a strong statement that blockchain can be environmentally friendly and contribute to the betterment of science. For the moment, we're still ahead; now's our time to focus our vision and collect the resources to compete with up-and-coming tokens!

Ultimately, even if Gridcoin isn't a success in the long term, IMO it would still have been worth it to work with the community here. It's a lot of fun. No one is presumptuous: we're just a bunch of nerds who love science and technology and want to build a cool blockchain protocol around those interests. A lot of the shiny new tokens out there just don't have a community like that.

Think about the BOINC community. It's been around for like 20 years, through thick and thin. I think Gridcoin will be just as steady and long-lasting, even if our market cap doesn't explode to 100 billion like Bitcoin. (but never say never...! haha. maybe we could catch the interest of some tech giant out there like IBM and get seed funding to really develop our technology base. lol who knows.)