NCE Feature Update — 2026-03-12

Spaces can now have groups with their own members, channels, and identity. Paid access is coming next week — subscriptions and one-time purchases that gate group membership, with revenue splits and treasuries underneath. Every founding DFOS member can now create a space. The cryptographic protocol is going open source. Last week's update covered the permissions system, notification settings, and space shape — this is what's happened since.

Groups

Groups are live (find them in the MEMBERS app), and they're one of the bigger new ideas in DFOS. A group is a thing people belong to within a space — members, channels, a color, an identity. They compose with the permissions system from last week: same grants, same topic access, same engine underneath. If roles are about what you can do, groups are about who you are inside a space.

There are three join modes: open (anyone opts in), invite (admin adds you), and paid (via access pass — more on that below). All three carry the same grant mechanics. Any group can hold grants to private topics, and those topics only appear for group members. Open groups give members a way to self-select into specific conversations, invite groups let admins curate subsets, and paid groups gate access behind a purchase.

When creating a group, you can create new topics for it in two flavors: group-private channels that are completely hidden from non-members, or group channels that are visible to everyone in the space but only group members can post and chat in. Beyond that, you can also assign existing topics to a group, or set up more nuanced permission structures by editing the group's grants directly — posting rights across all topics, chat access to specific channels, space-wide visibility overrides, whatever the situation calls for.

Some examples of what you can build with this: a self-organized reading club that anyone opts into, with its own private discussion channel. A trusted subset of contributors with posting grants to curated channels where they share high-quality work. A private room for a specific collaboration that only exists for the people in it. A paid tier that unlocks behind-the-scenes content and a dedicated chat. Or just a way to manage channel-overwhelm — new members start with the base experience, opt into the groups that matter to them, and the channels they don't have access to simply aren't there.

A member's group affiliations show as colored pills on their profile and tint their @-mentions. The chat sidebar organizes channels by group, so you can see the structure of a space at a glance. Adding someone to a closed group happens right from their member profile card — in the member list, in chat, wherever you encounter them in the app. Right now group management is admin-only, but we'll be opening that up so space runners can delegate it to trusted members.

Today groups are reflected in chat and on member profiles. Posts are next — post cards will show their topic's group, and the post timeline will support filtering by group so you can scope the feed down to what a specific group is producing. We're also revisiting space customization more broadly — what the desktop looks like, what members land on, how the space feels when you open it — and groups are going to be a central part of how that comes together.

We've got groups running in our own spaces now and we're watching what happens — what works, what's awkward, where the gaps are. More group surfaces and mechanics coming as we figure out where they want to go.

Access passes

Shipping next week — our first experiment in paid access to space content. An access pass is a product that gates membership in a group. A single pass can offer a one-time purchase, a monthly subscription, a yearly membership, or all three at once — the buyer picks the option that fits. One access pass can unlock multiple groups, and multiple access passes can feed into a single group, so the relationship between what you buy and what you get is as simple or as layered as the space runner wants it to be. The chain: pay → group → grants → access.

Joining a space stays free. What's behind groups is up to the space runner — open, invite, or paid. When someone buys an access pass, group membership materializes, grants apply, and private topics appear. The space reshapes to match what you've unlocked.

The commerce layer underneath supports multi-level revenue splits and space-level treasuries, built on the same financial infrastructure that powers Metalabel's marketplace. When a payment lands, the system knows who gets what share, distributes it, and gets money to creators.

Where this points: group-level treasuries. A group with its own split schedule, its own distribution cascade — revenue from an access pass routes through the group's treasury and out to the people inside it. Multiple groups, multiple treasuries, multiple economic shapes within a single space. We'll share more about the commerce system as access passes go live.

Space creation

The 2,200+ people who found their way into DFOS before this week can now create spaces. As Yancey put it, we're all used to being in spaces together enough — the time has come. The permissions system, groups, notification controls, all of it is there to shape however you want. New spaces are already popping up.

The protocol

The DFOS protocol reference published this week in clear.txt. It formalizes how DFOS handles cryptographic identity and verifiable content — Ed25519 key pairs, JWS compact serialization, content-addressed CID chains, W3C DID resolution — all built on existing standards so anyone can verify or reimplement with off-the-shelf libraries. Cross-language verification suites now pass in TypeScript, Rust, and Swift.

Part of this effort is a dedicated protocol site with a client-side signature validator (think jwt.io but for DFOS operations), a native CLI client with OS-keyring key management for signing and verifying from the terminal, and public protocol HTTP endpoints that any space can opt into. The open-source package, documentation, and tooling are all sequenced out over the next few weeks.

Other things that shipped

Grantable moderation, pinning, and announcing — space admins can now delegate these to custom role holders without handing out admin keys. Announced posts from hidden channels deliver only to grant holders.

Per-channel notification overrides — watch or mute individual channels. Muted channels disappear from your unread indicators entirely, stacking on top of the per-space notification settings from last week.

Announcement audience preview — see exactly how many members will receive an announcement before you send it. Announcements are now available to all spaces.

Channel editing — full settings-style edit modal for topics with name, description, visibility, member access, and delete. Replaces the old 3-dot menu.

Code blocks and tables — fenced code blocks now render with syntax highlighting across all major languages, and tables get proper scrollable layout. Both break out wider than surrounding prose on desktop so technical content has room to breathe.

Identity hover cards — hover on any author name or @-mention to see their profile inline.

Self-muted notifications — your own posts and messages no longer trigger unread indicators for yourself.

Media and files — coming soon: inline audio players with app-wide singleton playback, inline MP4 video, and file attachments on both short and long posts as download cards. Posts will support mixed media — images, audio, video, and files together.

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Permissions, groups, paid access, treasuries, the protocol — each one builds on the last, and each one opens up new ways to shape what a space can be. We ship as we build, respond to what we see, and keep going. Spaces are in your hands now.

Curious to see what you do with them :)