it's easy to forget.

You got that right.

Bitcointalk: the very corrupt beginnings of steem

It began 2016 and for anyone that did their research, it's clear why this was never and never will be decentralised. Your own words again:

...major stakeholders as well as many of the top witnesses and developers (often the same people).

Don't forget the Hive fund for proposals too.
The "give me a third dip of the honey pot" fund.

That's major redflags that have never been corrected. With no proper second layer either there's just no way this can go up.

LeoFinance is (imo) better off detaching from Hive to secure growth. It's just silly to be a closed system within a closed system. Hive-engine is much too limited as a second layer and the recent post from its creator shows how he's desperate to try to gain fools money now that Hive is down.

HF24 doesn't seem like it's going to change much. That's the thing with repeating the same thing over and over. SMT is (was) the only possible "fix."