What is interesting about the Staking projects is that it is the first model on the cryptocurrency sphere that bring yeld as incentive of investing on a cryptocurrency.
It's still too soon to predict how each project will develop, but its totally worth to watch closely how they evolve. Also:
with Tezos requiring a minimum investment of $17,000 at current rates.
That is not true. On Tezos (as in other chains), this minimum investment is only needed if you want to implement a 'baker'(how masternodes are called on Tezos chain), but using your stake to vote on a 'baker' you get a share of the masternode profits.
At the end, there is no minimum to 'stake' on tezos, but i saw recommendations of having at least 1 XTZ for the staking be worth..
Staking is starting to evolve quite a bit. It was the one thing that remained static in operation. Now, additional incentives beyond yield are starting to play a major role. The massive appreciation in exchange tokens is at least partially due to the staking incentive of IEO access.
And right, you make a valid point on Tezos baking.
MN pooling and its variations have been around for a while and let people collectively join in the staking process.
From that point, any staking offer can be made accessible.
Indeed, but what Tezos (and other coins) started to offer is to participate in the staking process without the need to send your funds to a staking pool, wich reduce the risk by a lot.