Which projects don’t give whales the high ground?

First of all, it might be a stupid question, because I know how financial markets work. But still, I joined crypto because I just hated how traditional markets worked with the big funds and players having most of the power and all the political connections.

After getting to know crypto, I sadly found out that most projects are controlled in the same way. Big VCs in the background, developers that hold a giant amount of their project‘s coins or even arranged pump and dumps in the worst case. I looked for different ecosystems like the COSMOS ecosystem where all users can participate through governance, but in the end, still the amount of coins rules what gets decided.

I now ask you, if you know any projects where the individual users have more rights in determining the future of the projects than the sole amount of coins a user holds. Do you thinks that’s even possible or a stupid idea and prone to abuse? Or are you even content with the status quo and that’s just how markets work?

Thanks for your ideas!