The only way to stop yourself being at the mercy of Whales is to Power Up and seek to make a return through curation, no one can take that away.

To add to that, one can also make thier own token and community that branches off like LEO/POB did.

It is pretty interesting seeing posts on LEO/PoB make more in terms of USD value than they do on Hive. With dozens or hundreds of communities as active as them we could see a bright future where decentralized communities are where people go who are looking for earning rewards for blogging as the primary reward, and Hive becomming less and less needed for rewards.