Dash roadmap recently announced, and Masternodes will become a big biz opportunity with much higher costs (special hardware), but the cool news is that regular Dash holders will be able to buy partial shares of a Masternode. I don't know if that means you will get a proportionate vote on budget items, but possibly so.

Dash has a good shot at being the one that really can compete with fiat and credit/debit cards. The relative stability in price over the last two days while most other altcoins fell much more shows me that people are hanging on to them expecting long term value.