There is a good argument to be made that all prior top witnesses bear responsibility for failing to already put in place a trustless way to ensure the ninja-mined stake was used as intended/promised (for funding development and onboarding new users, and not voting).

This! We relied on off chain assumptions and wishes... However, I think the problem is more that the consensus mechanism is flawed. 20 consensus and 30 votes was never going to be unexploitable... We just hoped it wouldn't happen.