If the whales of Hive wanted it to be decentralized DPOS they would power down and sell their Hive so more people could have access to it. This makes things more decentralized the less whales there are. We don't need whales for the Hive blockchain to work, whales are centralized entities with large amounts of stake.
I dont think anyone should be marketing Hive (or Steem for that matter) as DPOS until we are there. Code is law, stake is power, the reality of code is law just means might = right, and staked power is the same. Having a few dozen very powerful Kings is not the intent of DPOS, it is perverse that there are whales on DPOS. Is it better that we have 30 or so powerful Kings rather than 1 King? Sure, its more decentralized. Would it be even better if it took thousands and thousands of people voting for a witness to make them top 20? Yes, it would be a lot more decentralized and exponentially more secure, as it would be a lot less like a cartel and more like actual users of the platform controlling things(how DPOS is envisioned and protrayed to be).
Right now the top 20 witnesses have some large backers voting for them for witness. Is it decentralization to have 30 to 50 of the top Hive power accounts choosing who is in charge?
How is that not a Cartel? How is it DPOS? Wouldn't DPOS look like "it takes 1000s of accounts voting on a witness for them to be top 20, not 30 to 50?"
Is Hive more decentralized than Steem? Yes. Is there a better spirit among the current power brokers of whom we are all at their mercy? Yes. Does it need to be that way, do whales on this platform TRULY need this much control? No.
Will the whales sell their stake to help make Hive more decentralized? This is decentralization that can happen almost immediately, simply start the power down process and sell(or at least stay powered down).
I think all accounts with over 150k HP should start powering down and sell onto the market so we can have more decentralization. Also, I encourage people to start buying Hive and powering up. I sold some recently and have now changed my mind on how I view Hive. I now view Hive as "something we all need to constantly hammer, something that we all need to constantly challenge, constantly challenge any entrenched high power accounts and encourage them to sell, encourage others to buy". Join me and reiterating this message. We can put pressure on the entrenched just like we do with rich people in real life or politicians, the rich people on Hive are BOTH POLITICIANS AND WEALTHY ELITES, whether they view themselves as that or not is irrelevant, they are. They are in complete control of the politics of this chain via being rich, that's a Cartel baby!!!
Hive DPOS has to get away from what Steem DPOS was, we are nowhere close to being ACTUAL DECENTRZLIED DPOS. Oh, and when we have 75/25 rewards whales were being bled yearly and losing their power because they upvoted others. Let's say a whale would upvote content weekly and give out 750 USD in rewards to authors and 250 USD to themselves via curation rewards, under 50/50 that changed to 500 to authors and 500 to themselves. This effectively keeps the whale a whale until they sell, whereas before they slowly lose their whale status over time under 75/25(which is the whole point). 50/50 is yet another perversion that was rationalized as a way for "people to buy stake". I've called this out many times and it never got any traction.