There was a teflon spray that dried quickly and did not have the stickiness of most chain waxes. I can't recall if it is DuPont brand. But, I seem to recall that it did well at NOT holding dirt on contact. So that would help in dry conditions. If you are riding in wet/muddy conditions, your chain is just going to get nasty. The only thing that will help is cleaning it and getting any water off it before it has time to rust.
I often spray my chains with WD-40 if I don't have time to really clean them and they are wet. Basically, the WD-40 just gets the water off the chain (and is messy). There is some debate about the WD-40 penetrating the O-rings and degrading the grease. However, I have used both chain waxes/lubes and WD-40 on different bikes and have seen no significant difference in chain life when using just one exclusively versus the other. I did the wax/lube thing on my VFR 800s for years (100K miles of riding). With the KLR 650, Vstrom 650 and my KTM 530, I have mostly done WD-40. I still get about 15-20K out of a chain depending on the conditions in which I ride. That said, I know there are people out there that can squeeze upwards of 50K miles out of chain, usually with super anal attention and a Scott-Oiler system (also incredibly messy). The cost of a quality chain and set of sprockets is low enough, and they are easy enough to change, that I don't get real worked up about trying to squeeze every last possible mile out of them.
A really BIG and OFTEN overlooked factor in chain life is keeping the proper adjustment on the chain slack. Being overly tight or loose can ruin a chain and sprockets quite fast. Misalignment of the rear wheel/sprocket can also cause premature wear. Once those O-rings break down and/or the grease inside them degrades (or is just gone), chains will generally "stretch" very quickly. They don't actually stretch in the sense of stretching like a spring or rubber band, they just wear so bad that the effect is for the holes in the links to go out of round from wear and for the pins to wear down to smaller diameters, in effect making the chain longer. I have had a chain go from good to bad in a day. I was lucky to make it home and had to stop repeatedly to take out some slack on the way. All it takes is one O-ring going bad because your chain is only as strong as its weakest link
It is not rigorously accurate, but I have developed the habit of taping my chains with the toe of my boot before riding. I tap it side to side, not up and down. If you have missing O-rings, you will usually hear the plates rattling against each other. If I hear that, the chain gets a closer inspection and is usually replaced. Of course, this would require that more than one or two O-rings have gone missing or you wouldn't get enough movement in the plates to make noise. Measuring the slack on a regular basis is also a good way to keep an eye on the chain. If it starts to change, then its a good bet that the grease is gone even if the O-rings are still intact.