Agree that are no stakes.
This Arc would be for One Piece what the Pain Arc was for Naruto, when the main characters beat this top tiver villain and become a top tier himself.
But while in Naruto Jiraya death set the stakes for the battle, with him being a very important character for Naruto himself and a fan favorite, and also having a connection with the villain, Kishi also adds up with the destruction of the village, Kakashi and Hinata "deaths".
In OP, the death that sets the stakes was Oden one, but Oden have zero emotional connection with Luffy, the SH and the readers, he was introduced too late in the story and feel forced the way Oda tried to push he as this characters on pair with fan favorites like Luffy, Ace, Shanks and WB on his FB, pehaps if he was build up with time then could happen, but his late introduction made it impossible. And to make everything worse there's a problem with the characters of Wano, the greatness of Oden should be feel by the readers throught the Wano citzens, but, lets be true, the readers dont care about them, even the scabbards and Momo feel totally irrelevant, as there too many of them, with not much development and no one feel really a connection with the Wano folk. Also the threat of Kaido to Wano didnt feel real, even if the characters say Kaido is bad for Wano, Oda dont show it in a impactfull way, like how Kishimoto have done with Pain destroying the Leaf village, by making Kaido kill innocents and this kind of things. I can bet that everyone feel more hate for Saint Charloss in Sabondy in two chapter than for Kaido in 100 chapters.
I doubt that anyone here cares about the problems of Wano, the characters the readers care and want to see like Luffy and the SH, Law, Kid and even Marco, have zero stakes in Wano, they want to defeat the emperors but that could happen without all the Wano plot. A great exemple of zero connection with Wano folk is Yasu death, it was more impactifull to the readers than Oden one, because it had impact on Zoro who is characters the readers have a emotional connection and care about.
I dont feel nothing wrong with Luffy, Law, Kid, etc, defeating BM and Kaido in relation with powerscaling, but to me feel like they will defeat them just because its needed for the story to keep going on, not because of something more like what happend in Arlong Park(Nami), Alabasta(Vivi), Ennies Lobby(Robin), Marineford(Ace/Luffy) or Dressrosa(Law). While in place of the Scabbards and Momo there were characters that we care.