🌴 It takes a village: similarities of Balinese village and blockchain community

Community service = Contribution to the network. Culture preservation = culture creation.

This is essay 3 of 4 essays for 1729 Writers Cohort #2.

It takes a village. A well known saying which means that many people must cooperate to achieve a goal. 

In this article, I am pondering on what we can learn from a collaborative culture of a village to create a sustainable community on the blockchain. Here I am using the example from my cultural roots, the customary village in Bali, Indonesia.

🌴 What is a customary village in Bali? 

Behind the hustle and bustle of touristy beach clubs and digital nomads cafes across Bali, a traditional village life existed in the background. The Balinese customary village or Desa Adat in Indonesian, is a traditional administrative concept.

Rich in local cultural heritage combined with religious Hinduism beliefs. A unique concept of balance between the human world (sekala) and the mystical world (niskala). 

Many of the Balinese customary villages have existed since the Dutch colonization era, long before the establishment of the Indonesian Nation state. The Dutch considered them as zelfbesturende landschappen or self governing landscapes.

It is because every village has its own social rules called Awig Awig. A traditional customary law and traditional norms where every villager has to obey. These laws are defined in a democratic way by the villagers themselves, and handed over through generations.

It defines the social structure of the village, from religious ceremony do’s and don'ts , social permits, and even traditional punishment. 

Example of a Balinese funeral procession, it does takes a village (Source)

Life in the village is an example of applied game theory. Where villagers peacefully and voluntarily collaborate to get the most value from each other. From harvesting farms, cooking at wedding ceremonies, bearing coffins at funeral processions, and policing the community.

So how does this relate to a community on the blockchain? Here is some examples that I can highly relate to.

🤝 Community service = Contribution to the network

Every family in Bali can be traced back to their original customary village, similar to the concept of houses in Game of Thrones. And regardless of where the family are living, they still have to follow their customary village rules and pay homage to where they come from. 

This could be in the form of volunteering in religious ceremonies, or providing financial donations to local projects such as a temple construction. For example, one might be living in a luxury villa far away, but would regularly visit their customary village for religious ceremonies. Or someone working overseas and sending back donations to its village.

Though this might sound strange to people living in big cities, Balinese society took it very seriously. My Dad used to tell me that there is a traditional tracking system in place.

The village knows who paid their dues and who does not. This has severe consequences, such as no volunteers at the family’s religious events or the risk of being a social outcast.

Group of women volunteered to make religious offering (Source)

In a Blockchain community, this can be applied with tokenomics, where participants in the community can receive token airdrops if they provide contribution to the network. For example, a lot of DAO gives out its native token to the community that either joined early, hence creating the network effect. Or doing bounty hunting, providing various services to the network, from marketing, coding, to fundraising. 

Some communities also adopted the token gated system, where one has to purchase tokens such as the highly successful Bankless DAO. In order to join the Bankless discord channel, you need 35,000 Bank tokens, equivalent to around $600 in August 2022. Others used NFT as a gateway to enter the community, such as Kevin Rose’s Proof Collective.

🎺 Culture preservation = culture creation

In every Balinese village, there are various types of arts and music groups that aims to preserve the local culture. The most common group is traditional dance group and ethnic musical band.

These groups provide free training to the local youth. And typically performs in religious ceremonies in the village. By doing this, the unique artistic culture of the area can be passed over through generations.

Youth musical group (Source)

In a decentralized blockchain community, the creation of culture is very critical. Community specific culture is like the glue that bonds the members together, beyond geographical and cultural background.

Different types of group/ guild can be established to create and spread stories that everyone in the community can relate to.

For example, in the Ethereum community, local chapters around the world are aligned on creating Ethereum ecosystem (e.g. events, projects) that are built around the concept of Solarpunk, which envisions a future that managed to create a successful integration between environment, social inclusiveness, and technology. 

Or from my own example in the 1729 community, where the Writers group published various articles related to the ideas of Balaji Srinivasan’s The Network State concept.

Conclusion

The huge improvement from a customary village to a blockchain network is that every contribution and transaction is transparently recorded on-chain. Solving coordination problem by replacing mystical norms with immutable code.

This article is inspired by a piece from fellow 1729 writer, Camellia Yang on Startup Villages | Three Stories from Unknown Chinese Towns. 

Thanks for reading this article and enjoy the weather ☀️.