It is less but it also accounts for 2% of the entire hive market cap which is kind of crazy. The other point I would argue is Hive is just becoming more and more centralized by large players. Now sure they worked, invested etc to have that large stake but it is causing issues I believe in terms of centralizing hive much like we had the issue with steem.
The other issue is of that 177 Million hive staked only 57.1 million is on the highest voted proposal so where is that other 100 million hive?
There are two glaring issues.
Not everyone votes on proposals. Perhaps something should be in play where you have to vote on at least on proposal even if it's the return proposal in order to earn staking reward. Or/and vote on at least one witness.
Blocktrades houses 23 million of the voted hive from what I can tell. So unless blocktrades is voting on your proposal I don't think it's going to ever pass at the moment because there's simply not enough people voting.
Point 1 should help solve the inaction and unkown of new people to hive or even old about what proposals are, witnesses etc. There seems to be a huge lack of people that even know it exist.
If anything I think Splinterlands once again brought more attention to the DHF voting then has happen in the last two years!
Some proposals have passed without @blocktrades vote, in fact a few have. With his vote is almost guaranteed.
More people have to stake and or participate if you want to change that.