A group of 20 witnesses decided a soft fork from a secret meeting, by themselves without asking the community.

I dont think this is a 'collapse', but the system working as intended.

DPoS works like a democracy, where the voter trust that those they are voting for will do what they expect to be done. Our votes put these people in power, just like in a democratic state, and we are delegating to them the power to decide what to do with the blockchain. So, whatever the witnessess did was indeed approved by a big part of the community.

Only two differences:

1 - It's not 1 person = 1 vote, more like 1 USD = 1 vote
2 - Community don't have to wait 4 years to change the politicians. The moment a witness lose enough community support, they are out of the governance.