I made my attempt at explaining Peercoin recently here, however I also found a great article by someone on Reddit. I wanted to make sure it was permanently saved on the forum, so I copied it below…

A time is coming when people are going to appreciate a well-distributed, ultra-secure, slow-changing coin based on sound economic principles. That coin is peercoin.

If bitcoin is the honey badger of currencies, than peercoin is the tardigrade of currencies. The word tardigrade ultimately comes from the Latin tardigradus meaning “slow-stepper:”

They can survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms. They can withstand temperature ranges from 1 K (−458 °F; −272 °C) (close to absolute zero) to about 420 K (300 °F; 150 °C), pressures about six times greater than those found in the deepest ocean trenches, ionizing radiation at doses hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose for a human, and the vacuum of outer space. They can go without food or water for more than 30 years, drying out to the point where they are 3% or less water, only to rehydrate, forage, and reproduce.

Why is this slow-stepping, segmented, lightweight animal one of the most successful, most indestructible animals on Earth? It is for the same reason that peercoin will be one of the most successful, most indestructible cryptocurrencies on Earth: it’s built to last.

Here are a few of the things that I like about peercoin:

Peercoin will never have a crisis based on lack of security. A permanent 1% supply inflation rate (intelligently adopted by the Monero community, albeit in 100% proof-of-work) ensures that there will always be an incentive to run nodes and mint peercoin. Peercoin’s mixed proof-of-stake and proof-of-work system will provide incentives for both non-mining stakeholders (minters) and miners to continue to secure the network indefinitely. Will bitcoin miners earn enough to bother securing the network consistently for the next few decades?

Peercoin will have no crisis of governance because it will not change its original vision. As much as some of Core supporters may dislike Roger Ver, he is correct in stating that the original vision of bitcoin was “a peer to peer electronic cash.” That is what he bought into. Whether the Lightning Network will work or not, there was a social contract that is no longer being honored. Again, I must mention and compliment the Monero community for intelligently sticking to their social contract by refusing to reduce the supply inflation of Monero ex-post-facto when the issue arose.

People do not seem to understand the concept of “attack surface.” The more you add to and modify a system, the more complex it becomes. The more complex it becomes, the more that can go wrong. In the short term, a cryptocurrency that constantly adds new features and rapidly morphs may seem exciting and innovative, but in the long run, you are creating vulnerabilities that will inevitably come to light. The peercoin development team believes in modularity. That means Layer 1 of peercoin should remain fairly unchanging. Slow-stepping. Layered. (Remember our segmented friend, tardigradus? This is why many of the most successful creatures on this Earth have barely changed in hundreds of millions of years.) New functionalities and protocols, such as PeerAssets, can then be added as independent layers. For example, while peercoin itself is not designed to facilitate high transaction throughput on the main network, second-layer solutions (such as payment channels or secondary tokens that are secured by transactions on the main peercoin blockchain) can scale transactions infinitely. In the long run, this modularity will be more secure and easier to build upon.

Think of it like John Exter’s inverted pyramid…

The slow-changing, ultra-secure Layer One (the peercoin blockchain) is the golden foundation upon which any number of additional layers can be built. Anyone is free to build anything on top of peercoin that is as risky or complex as they can conceive. And if their conception is flawed, then peercoin needs not fall with it. The failure will not affect Layer One because it never changed Layer One in the first place. Though peercoin may seem stale or boring now, over time, the simplicity of Layer One and peercoin’s low mutation rate will be recognized as major advantages over its competitors and peercoin’s superior design choices will be vindicated. While other cryptocurrencies argue over making major changes to their blockchains, the peercoin community will remain firmly committed to the vision of peercoin as a “backbone currency” - a vision Sunny King espoused years ago:

From my point of view, I think the cryptocurrency movement needs at least one ‘backbone’ currency, or more, that maintains [a] high degree of decentralization, maintains [a] high level of security, but not necessarily providing [a] high volume of transactions. Thinking of savings accounts and gold coins, you don’t transact them at high velocity but they form the backbone of the monetary systems.

It may take a few more technical disasters. Maybe a few founders getting arrested for dodgy distribution or dodgy interest-gaining schemes. Maybe a few more shattered communities due to broken social contracts. But eventually you guys are going to recognize the elegance and foresight contained in peercoin’s design. The value of the slow-stepper. And if you don’t, the serious players who enter this space in the coming years will. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.