[ZeroCoin]

re: "The problem there is that you need a way to make sure when it becomes popular you don't end up with a land grab and all the reasonable names end up in the hands of scammers and squatters, and I'm also not sure how they're addressing transferability and abandonment."

.bit domains do expire approximately every 9 months I believe, unless you spend more namecoins to re-register them using your private key in which case you re-register said domain for 9 more months.

Abandonment happens if you no longer own the private key used to register the domain and/or you no longer make payments into the network.