The pool only has a few members in it. Owned by who? I'm going to guess that everyone in the pool is owned by the same person. (Because he can't steal from himself) Therefore the coin still remains deeply decentralized because pools like this could pop up everywhere! Meaning that only individual mining farms would be apart of the pool. (By the way creating your own pool would be entirely realistic for someone who owned a bitcoin farm)
Doesn't matter. The coin was marketed as solo only and pools exist. Now that isn't the entire issue. And it was an issue that could have been addressed and even overcome. The issue is the campaign that was launched to deny the fact and attack those that brought the issue to light. When you have the main people behind a coin denying the truth, lying, and using any means they can to suppress it then that tells you something about those people. It's sleazy and I've seen it done by these same people before. They'll get whatever btc they can out of the people that fall for their scheme and when they can't get anymore btc they move on. The architect of this is well known and has done the same thing before with numerous coins. Someone needs to stand up and call these guys out. If that has to be me then so be it. But I'll be damned if I'm going to just sit back and watch this crap go on without saying anything. I don't care if it costs me financially. I'll make that loss up by going to sleep at night knowing that I still have my integrity.
Also, a true solo only coin would make it much more difficult for these large farms to come in and rape the coin.