Hacienda 1.2

DFOS levels up its media game in a big way this week with private streaming audio and video — plus updates across commerce, groups, notifications, chat, and space applications.

Below is the usual build-side feature rundown for Hacienda 1.2.

Media

Any type of media in just about any format can now be added to your space. Drag and drop onto the desktop or add from the item catalog; the system will process and prepare it for efficient streaming, and your original full-quality file stays available for download.

Audio is the same: a track comes up as a waveform you can scrub, cover and length read off automatically, tuned to stream and playable after a brief processing window. Upload size has increased and is soft-capped at 1GB for now (larger soon).

Audio and video play everywhere: desktop, chat, blog, search. Video shows a cover frame you tap to play, audio shows its waveform, and both play in place instead of sending you to another page. It's all private by default — access-controlled, so only the people who should reach it can play it. Audio tracks can be minimized into a persistent player that follows you around the space for background jams.

Media drops straight into a note — a short post — today; embedding it inside long-form posts comes later this month. The media system will keep improving over the rest of the month, too: more efficient delivery, higher quality streaming, and lower latency outside the US.

Commerce

Last cycle we established the core money loop: key sales go to the space treasury, a Spacerunner pays members, members withdraw to their bank. We've shipped a few incremental updates this week to give you more tools around how money is routed.

You can now set up a split: a percentage-based tool that divides a single payout cleanly across multiple space members.

And you can turn on auto-withdraw from your user wallet: set a threshold once and your balance pays itself out to your bank the moment it crosses that line.

Underneath, the whole money system got more robust. Refunds and subscription cancellations are tighter and clearer now — cancel a subscription and the member keeps what they paid for through the period; refunds resolve cleanly without leaving anything out of step. When something goes wrong, the money moves in the right direction, and the people already paid stay whole. We'll continue to improve here through deep testing and monitoring as more spaces start bringing in revenue for their members.

Commerce updates will continue to ship weekly, with things like automatically routing key sales, more seller functionality around refunds and subscription management, and the ability to include another space on a split payout.

Protocol

The open protocol underneath DFOS is stepping into the light. The locked v1 spec is finalizing this month, and with it, the protocol starts surfacing in the product again. Your identity and the work you make are things you genuinely own, carry their own proofs of authenticity and provenance, and remain portable (and provable) beyond any single platform, including this one.

These integrations will come online incrementally, and we'll walk through what it all means in depth for your identity, spaces, apps, and content as we go.

Smaller things

Reply in a thread and you can now also surface it at the top of the room. Every chat room has a follow/mute bell — decide exactly what pings you. Notifications, in the app and over email, show a real preview of what happened instead of just "someone replied." Real-time unread counts and badging had a wave of fixes. Share a space invite into a chat or a text and it unfurls into a clean preview card. Reject a space application and you can now attach a note that lands in the applicant's email — a touchpoint to close the loop.

We've made several subtle improvements and fixes for group access control: group admins and owners now have more control over installing and configuring apps, in a way that doesn't leak their authority beyond the group's boundaries. And open groups are browsable before you join — step inside, see the apps, read the room, then join when you want to take part.

Fixes

Around three dozen more fixes and refinements — across chat, media, the desktop, and a sweep of copy so the app speaks one consistent language. The drag-and-drop on your desktop got rebuilt, improving how it feels when rearranging items and moving them into and out of groups and folders.

What's next

Media has been a blast in the short time we've been playing with it this week. We have some fun ideas in the works on how we can compose these new primitives into killer experiences: think tracklists, more cinematic video playback, and richer social interaction on desktop media.

Pair that with upcoming commerce features and another layer opens up: a digital bundle store that funds your space's treasury and gives access to private files and streaming media.

We can't wait to see how y'all use media in your spaces. Let us know where you land with it!

More soon ✌️