Yes there will always be whales but with EOS I have committed what I could and had a year to do so. That wasn't the case with STEEM. I like STEEM and have invested a lot of time and Money into it but in the end the distribution was messed up and that is why it isn't in the top 10 on CoinMarketCap at this point. With EOS building off of the capabilities of BitShares and STEEM and having the ability to run things like that on top of it there will be many real world use cases for it that will drive demand.
The demand that is driven here is to become more powerful against people who spent $500 and ended up with a million worth of STEEM. So it makes it tough for anyone else to catch up and gain influence. It is like you are racing against Usain Bolt and guess what...... we aren't giving you starting blocks and we are going to have you go barefooted as well. Good luck!