My impression is that they have failed miserably.

And why do you think that?

Seems rather centralized to me, both from computing resource perspective - and those who were given founders stock / coins.

If Ethereum moves to proof of stake, than centralization / inequality of resources will equal inequality of wealth, which at that impasse asks the question what’s the point of having decentralized development?

Ethereum 2.0 will have a large number of validator nodes even at genesis[+] and the number will grow over time.

A deposit of 32 ether will be required to become a validator — not cheap, but also not astronomically expensive.

Here's a presentation from Devcon5 earlier this month demonstrating an Eth 2.0 client running on a Raspberry Pi:

https://slideslive.com/38920013/eth-20-on-a-pi

[+] https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/blob/master/specs/c...

Proof of stake solves a problem with energy and attack incentives, but it still doesn’t solve an inequality of resources within the system. A large number of validator nodes doesn’t run counter to that statement because just because anyone with 32 ether can be a validator doesn’t mean they will.

I respectfully disagree that this is the case.