Entire blockchains have been developed and are now 6 months old since we have been talking about SMTs.
Yes, the stake is a problem because they promise things, which stop others from developing those features/smts, financial changes etc. and since they do not deliver, we have to try to figure out what they are going to do and when they are going to do it.
If they didn't hold such an overwhelming amount of stake others could compete.
In addition, witnesses report being afraid to not support them.
Kind of defeats the purpose of a blockchain.
Agreeable, although so far there isn't much evidence any top witnesses or devs on the network showing they're more competent than the inc team (at least on the bc dev side), as much as I'm unhappy about the results after all these years.