I'm sure the top witnesses are determined by a very few whales, but I think the current system has some merit. What we need is for more people to actually vote as many will not have. The stake of the dolphins and orcas is growing and has some sway.
Have a !BEER
I'm currently doing an analysis of the system, might make a post out of it next week.
One of the main issues really is that many many stakeholders are not voting at all. While many big stakeholders have a huge impact on the election of the top 20, the bigger problem is the possibility of a single stakeholder (steemit inc for example) to overthrow the entire system all at once.
I'm analyzing if removing the voting limit would help, but if people don't vote more it doesn't change anything at all (coverage doesn't seem to improve a lot).
Reducing the system to 10 votes, would allow Steemit to elect 10-15 top witnesses (which is better than 30 but still not satisfying).
I just find there are lots of people I want to support and a lot of them are low on the rankings. I almost want to vote against some of the top witnesses :)
Haha, yeah. But that would reduce the coverage further and make the system more fragile.