You said you couldn't imagine a smaller team solving these issues unless they were absolute geniuses. However, even if this were to happen the open source nature of the blockchain would ensure these geniuses would help every other chain in the process.
I think almost every smart contract platform has it's place in the world. Ethereum will be the most trustworthy, EOS will be the most scalable, Tron might be the first to develop some killer apps, not sure what's up with Cardano/Neo but they'll likely find a niche as well. Steem is primed to create many apps with a built in community. Byteball's unique DAG system provides alternative technologies.
This is the nature of decentralization. Competition has been made obsolete.