Panchatantra is a collection of fables or short stories form India dating back to 2nd century B.C.. They were initially composed to impart moral values and knowledge to the princes back in the day. The each tale has at-least one moral lesson towards its end and seeks to empower the reader by taking advantage of the old adages and make better decisions. The etymology of term ‘Panchatantra’ suggests that it is a combination of two words, ‘Pancha’ (five) and ‘Tantra’ (practice/ principle).

The first fable in the series of articles is about The Foolish Monkey and The King.

Once upon a time, A king, while visiting his wives’ apartments, took a monkey from a neighboring stable for a pet. He kept him constantly close at hand for his amusement, for as it is said, parrots, partridges, doves, rams, monkeys, and such creatures are a king’s natural companions.

It goes without saying that the monkey, fed on the various dishes that the king gave him, grew large and was given respect by all who surrounded the king. Indeed, the king, due to his love and exceeding trust of the monkey, even gave him a sword to carry.

In the vicinity of the palace the king had a grove artfully planted with many trees of various sorts. Early in the springtime the king noticed how beautiful the grove was. Its blossoms exuded a magnificent fragrance, while swarms of bees sang praise to the god of love. Thus overcome by love, he entered the grove with his favorite wife. He ordered all his servants to wait for him at the entrance.

After having pleasantly strolling through and observing the grove, he grew tired and said to his monkey, “I want to sleep a little while in this arbor of flowers. Take care that nothing disturbs me!” Having said this, the king fell asleep.

Presently a bee, pursuing the aroma of the flowers, betel, and musk, flew up and lit on his head. Seeing this, the monkey thought angrily, “What is this? Am I to allow this common creature to bite the king before my very eyes?”

With that he proceeded to drive it away. However, in spite of the monkey’s defense, the bee approached the king again and again. Finally, blinded by anger, the monkey drew his sword and struck down the bee with a single blow. However, the same blow also split the king’s head.

The queen, who was sleeping next to the king jumped up in terror. Seeing the crime, she said, “Oh, oh, you foolish monkey! What have you done to the king who placed such trust in you?”

The monkey explained how it had happened, but thereafter he was shunned and scorned by everyone. Thus it is said, “Do not choose a fool for a friend, for the king was killed by a monkey.”

Moral of the story and why is it relevant for us in web3

1. It is better to have a clever enemy than a foolish friend.

There is an ongoing debate between centralization and decentralization in the Web3 space, with most of the proponents of web3 arguing in the favor of decentralization and wisdom of crowds. Incidents like FTX, Quadriga and others further add weight towards the decentralization of systems, as placing trust in a particular entity or person has often lead to investors and common public burning their hands and losing their life savings and earnings. While the decentralized collectives and DAOs are finding ways to collaborate and empower the stakeholders and customers, the problem that comes from growth and scaling of the web3 communities and decision making is not just a purely technical problem. Some degree of centralization is, a value add for the decentralized systems as is evident through the implementation of node validators and nominators in the DAOs.

The decentralized systems relying just on the mathematical foundations, calculations and wisdom of crowds could possibly fail at high levels as they not take into consideration the foolishness of the crowd, the flip side of the wisdom of crowd and the unconcious self-sabotaging nature of the crowd. The foolishness of crowds, I believe is at its best display during the twitter pumps and dumps of crypto assets by the whales. Wisdom of crowd or foolishness of crowd is statistically equally likely as they are the only possible outcomes when the crowd is pressed to participate in a community to reap benefits and rewards. The systems are therefore prone to this vulnerability similar to the monkey in the fable. In a completely decentralized system, there is a possibility of either information overload or lack of information for the crowd depending on where an individual member is looking. So, some degree of centralization and competence is required for decision making even in the DAOs apart from just being able to buy a token and start voting on important issues concerning the network.

Finding such a sweet spot for the community and cooperative would require reorganization and some degree of hierarchy amongst our web3 communities instead of just community managers and members. But that is a problem we’ll solve some other time.

Please let me know your feedback about the article and views about a fully decentralized web3 system in the comments.

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