A lot of us are confused about the whales behind the altcoin blockchain, for the fact that the ethereum blockchain brought with it the ability for any programmer to make change to the blockchain which has given birth to several developments and new coins, tokens creation so the question is who are the whales behind the altcoin market development.
I think you are confusing between developers and whales. While one can be both like some users in this thread pointed out, they are usually different people, because developers are rare among common people but rich people are common.
It therefore ends up being who invested in what and nobody is going to give you a concrete answer to this because by nature these currencies are pseudo-anonymous.
But you can assume that whales will be there and they will try to influence the market psychology and you have to act against that, otherwise you are the one losing out on opportunities. Whales who raise the prices of some shitcoins are not to be trusted. In this sector, it is better to use your own judgement more often than what whales/"self-proclaimed whales" are doing.