I think DPOS is a great system, we just need to find a way to get rid of mafia teams like Team elite who give only a little piece of stake back to the community. The thing is they give something back and people will rather get few coins from them than vote for someone with cool project which takes time to deliver and it might never deliver at all.
So for the beginning I hope we can replace Team Elite with POOLS which will give us a much better return than Team Elite which promises nothing really. You can get into 101 though Team Elite just because you have a lot of coins and only thing you "owe" to the community is that little percentage that all team elite members need to give to the pool.
So Team Elite members don't really have the motivation to build something more for the Lisk with those funds because they are easily keeping their delegate spots just by being in the mafia network who back each other with a lot of votes. So currently Team Elite is only an inflation for the Lisk project with few individuals that actually use Lisk for something else except building a fortune on it. This is our current problem that needs to be solved.
SOLUTION
All other delegates should offer more percentage than Team Elite back to the voters and cool projects but they should do it systematically like Team Elite so that the voters are sure to get their Lisk without any mambo jumbo, and to get this I propose that Lisk team builds a delegate dashboard with timeframes, numbers and projects proposals.
With the dashboard a delegate would setup the % of shares that he is returning to the voters and the timeframe in which percentage will be LOCKED. Payouts to the voters would be automatic. Also it would be easy and transparent to see project proposals and updates and history. This way we would be able to keep track of everything easily rather then using a forum which is a mess when it comes to tracking.
With this system you can easily knock out someone from voting if you see he's not doing what he initially proposed and took money for.
Would you complain to the bitcoin miners for not doing anything for bitcoin development?
The miners throw more and more money on the hardware to increase their hash-rate, for getting more dividends.
For me delegates in LISK are similar to the miners in BTC.
The problem here is everyone is expecting the delegates to do awesome work or give a good share of their forged LISK back to the community.
Just like the BTC space, the progress doesn't have to come from the delegates, its the community which drives the progress.
If you believe in LISK, you buy, you hold and you promote, eventually the value and awareness of LISK will increase and you make good returns.
For delegates, with DPOS architecture, its inevitable that groups will be formed and if you are willing to throw lots of money at it, buy loads of LISK and join them.
Unfortunately this is the harsh reality and I don't see any solution to this delegate problem.