Whales are deciding in both ways, but in one way, they are directly involved as VCs, with their OWN money, and that is a huge difference from giving away "community money" (DHF)...
The most important is the result of actions... If it helps to the token price and the ecosystem in general, I don't care was the whale who funded it, or a group of people, or whatever...
I agree but blockchain has its own rules, then witnesses have to implement it, so it's not necessarily easy to succeed, in fact, it's easiest to do projects on layer 2.