I agree it's far too early to label the current model a failure. It seems to me that stake is continuing to be distributed and while it will take a long time to achieve more balance, we need to work more toward achieving that end within the current framework rather than constantly changing the rules.
When I look at the accounts of a handful of the most controversial whales, I see them making very little rewards proportional to their current stake. They do not take exorbitant sums from the author and curation rewards pools and some are actively powering down. As the rewards pool is distributed each day, their stake is getting more and more diluted, lessening their influence on the platform.
Dolphins and minnows who are active writers and curators are consistently outperforming their current level of stake, thereby growing their influence on the platform.
What is slowing this process is that most smaller participants are not using what influence they do have to good effect. I see many accounts doing very little curating, thus abdicating that power and slowing the distribution of Steem across the user base. Perhaps Steemit needs to look to integrate an autovoting system directly into the site and educate new users on it. It could even simplify such tasks as delegating a certain percentage of voting rights each day to a particular tag category so that users can simplify the task of supporting the communities they are interested in. Trails and delegating votes to manual curators do the same essential task, but how many minnows use these? Simple, straightforward, integrated solutions for exercising voting stake would be great. The witness voting system is already a model. Applied to curation voting rights, with a clear interface and documentation, we could really start seeing the platform properly rewarding the will of the stakeholders each day, organically distributing Steem into the future.
I've also long encouraged showing the "minnow math" and integrating smaller payouts into the UI. Busy does calculate out to a third decimal place and while it's not much, it is more encouraging to see a vote move a post by a couple tenths of a cent rather than not see it move at all. New user retention and activity may be greatly improved by such a simple change, as people can literally see that their actions are not worthless.
User participation is first and foremost. I'm always 100% Steem power, and voting. That's the basis of the grassroots movement we need to distribute the stake to a wider world.