My ideal cryptocurrency would have the following properties:

• Fast, like Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, or BNB, so probably some proof of stake variant, but open to other fast options
• No gas fees paid in a separate token like with ETH or SOL. There is nothing more annoying than needing a separate native currency just to pay gas. It is also messy and unintuitive for new users, and a potential privacy risk
• Everything, sender, recipient, and amount, fully hidden using zero knowledge proofs, with no ability to opt out. All transactions are private by default, unlike Zcash where only a small portion of transactions end up being private in practice. Zero knowledge proofs have been mathematically proven to have no leaks, whereas obfuscation techniques like ring signatures do, for example the EAE attack on Monero
• Two versions: one pegged to USD and one not pegged. This caters to two distinct audiences. The first are everyday users who want to buy things without worrying about conversions or losing money to exchange rate fluctuations when simply trying to make a purchase. The second are privacy enthusiasts who distrust central banking and the USD, who also make up a large portion of the community. The peg would be maintained by locking up DAI. Pegging via USD or equivalents would likely invite pressure from the US government on the financial institution or account holder to shut it down, as we have seen with exchanges being pressured to delist Monero. USDT and USDC are also not viable as there are historical cases of both being frozen on the orders of the US government
• Native swaps to and from other major currencies like BTC, with no third party required. This would make onramping and offramping easier. For example, right now many exchanges including P2P exchanges have Monero banned, and such a cryptocurrency might face the same fate. Users trying to purchase it would then have to do two transactions, which is twice as much effort, twice as much time, and twice as much in exchange fees

Additional thoughts:

• Open source and decentralized governance. Obviously. The zero knowledge proof implementation especially needs to be publicly auditable and independently audited. No single team or foundation that can be pressured by governments to add backdoors or change the protocol
• Lightweight node if possible, though flexible on this
• No pre-mine or founder allocation. Privacy enthusiasts will blow a gasket if that happens and never adopt the coin
• Not natively Tor. We will leave that to the user. It could be the case that Tor goes away or something better comes along. In my experience, projects that integrate Tor natively always get messy, slow, and have poor adoption, think Haveno
• Need to do more thinking about chain analysis techniques and metadata attacks
• Quantum resistant

Don't agree? Share your thoughts with me by emailing me at chester@ni.gge.rs.