I'm at about 4800 GRC right now and I've been staking every 2-4 days since the patch came out. Since it took me about 9 months to get that many GRC, it seems to be at a reasonable spot for new miners.
However, that also indicates a larger problem, which you also alluded to in one of the comments. Based on your numbers, if all possible GRC was being staked, I should be staking every 3 months. Instead I'm staking about 30 times faster. That means that only about 1/30 of all the coins are currently online and staking, or around 3-4%.
This actually explains a lot of things, like why one whale can stake several times in succession, and why polls generally have such poor representation. It may be time to reconsider how we reward people for participating in staking, so that we can encourage more people to stake continuously.
You nailed it with regard to how few coins are actively staking, and I agree there needs to be some brainstorming done on changing the system. POS is a reward for helping to secure the network, and currently hardly any investors are doing that. On the flipside, that makes staking far harder for miners...
Thank you for providing your experience with V8 as well, it's interesting to see the very wide range of experiences people have had in the first week or so. We will probably have a better picture of the impact at the end of the month when everything has averaged out somewhat.