It's important that any kind of young community includes only people who share a common vision and are willing to work for it.
Cryptoprojects are suffering from delusion that everything should be decentralized as much as possible even in the beginning. But it's very rare that random people who don't have anything in common can work effectively together.
It would be much better if a small community ruled the whole project when it's still young. There would be very little drama and other stuff that will distract developers from doing the important job. Over time the decision making power can be distributed to a wider group of people when the platform matures.
I have written about this earlier: How to design efficient and resilient DAO
RE: Whales upvoting chosen accounts crap for the rewards is one thing, attacking the rewards of a genuinely productive account is utter madness