user9512: As anyone who has looked at the bitcoin protocol in depth can tell, it is really a huge mess of different encodings, hashing styles, and endian conversions. Although it would be a fairly cosmetic change, are there any projects out there to attempt to rewrite bitcoin and it's protocols to be more consistent and easier to maintain for the developers? (yes, I know it would have to be it's own coin or whatever) 

user5406: I believe that is what the NXT project is attempting to do.
It is a from scratch implementation of the ideas introduced by Bitcoin et al. They use Proof-of-Stake and claim to provide "built-in support for robust features such as a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange, voting system, messaging/chat, decentralized DNS, and options for instant transactions".

9512: <p>As anyone who has looked at the bitcoin protocol in depth can tell, it is really a huge mess of different encodings, hashing styles, and endian conversions. Although it would be a fairly cosmetic change, are there any projects out there to attempt to rewrite bitcoin and it's protocols to be more consistent and easier to maintain for the developers? (yes, I know it would have to be it's own coin or whatever) </p>
 5406: <p>I believe that is what the <a href="http://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Nxt_Wiki" rel="nofollow">NXT</a> project is attempting to do.</p>

<p>It is a from scratch implementation of the ideas introduced by Bitcoin et al. They use Proof-of-Stake and claim to provide "built-in support for robust features such as a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange, voting system, messaging/chat, decentralized DNS, and options for instant transactions".</p>
