I don't think ECDSA itself is a bad idea. You can 10x your signing capacity with the same hardware.

Why couldn't we make a new curve out in the open and then agree to use it? Increment an integer counter until a majority of cryptographers are satisfied.

The fact that the seed is not explained is troubling even if we can figure out how it was derived. We now know it uses a timestamp which means we can probe even deeper and more specifically into potential rigging of the numbers. I don't think we were supposed to figure this one out. I'd be interested in seeing the properties for curves of adjacent timestamps.