It is not focused on being money so much as it is focused on application building such as session and lokinet. Really, the only things you need $oxen (token) for is to setup a node or buy an oxen name and those are about the only use cases. I am by no means saying it is bad but it is not doing the same thing that Monero is.

I value the freedom of free software. A fork is good in that context.

PoS has at least one good aspect: it’s perceived as “green”. Other than that, afaik PoS tends to imply that only a few rich people can determine whether something is okay or not. The Monero network, on the other hand, is carefully designed so that any one with any CPU can participate (at least in principle). This design philosophy feels good.

I liked the idea about running a crypto to power a darknet, but the PoS move weren't a good idea. With Tor + SimpleXChat, we reach the pretty same goals wanted by OXEN.

Afaik, PoS (Proof of Stake) would weaken the chain, as it leads to more centralization, which makes it more vulnerable to attacks.

In what sense is it a better monero?

Session not only is privacy but also free speech! It’s a huge problem that the government controls DNS or domain names that point to IP addresses. You don’t own a domain, they rent it to you.

Our team has developed software for a distribution bot using Session messenger because Session has blockchain based DNS on top of onion routed privacy. This video explains how it works: https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/sessionbot/