you're right, entirely right. But I think this is what people want: Developers can control and fork the code at will because they have a majority (51% >) of the coins.

Coins are used for some kind of service that it provides (transaction fees for decentralized exchange, computation, storage). Developers fund development from the initial selling of the coin and have incentive to increase the price.

I wonder if the two tiered model (ETH/Gas, Factom/Entry Credit, there are lots) is better or worse

So much money grabbing happening right now, and often they don't have any kind of service or working software yet. Definitely a lot of specutlation, are these all tulips?