"Stake" doesn't physically exist, it is just a just a software metaphor. It is therefore impossible to physically verify that the "stake" is decentralized.
If you contrast this with Bitcoin, it is trivial to physically verify the decentralization of the network because the quantities of physical power being drawn from the environment to physically compete over ledger writing privilege is itself physically real, physically scarce, and physically decentralized.
People (especially software engineers) seem to be ignoring the physical differences between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake because they are trained in their profession to abstract away everything happening below assembly language. This causes them not to recognize changes to the underlying state-changing mechanism if they were to occur.
