NCE.DFOS week 07
MARCH 16TH, 2026
A lot moving in the forest this week. Here's a look at what caught our eye.
The big topic: SpaceCamp and a changing platform
This is the week DFOS begins to transfer from our hands to yours.
This is happening at multiple levels: everyone currently in a space now has the ability to create a space of their own (you'll get an email about this later today), and we're launching SpaceCamp as an open cohort where people can go through the process of building a space together. Both efforts come from the same place: we want to see what happens when you start making DFOS yours.
These efforts are getting a major boost this week with two more major product evolutions: Groups 2.0 and Money 1.0.
Groups 2.0
Last week we shipped groups — the ability for spaces to have subgroups within their communities to create more isolated, less noisy conversation. The feature got a lot of uptick immediately: 600+ people are already members of groups (25% of the entire DFOS user base!).
Now we're making groups more powerful in several ways:
- If a space allows it, members can create groups on their own (no admin required);
- Groups now have their own admins and owners, allowing for sub-deputizing within a space;
- Groups have more granular controls over who can post: only let admins post, or just this role, etc
These evolutions are all based on initial ways we saw spaces playing with the feature.
Money 1.0
This week the pieces will really start to come together with the addition of money to DFOS.
Starting later this week, you will be able to charge for access to a specific group — one-time or as a subscription — with funds shifting into the group's treasury. Splits, transfers, and other treasury components will follow.
The ability for money and groups to interlock, combined with opening up access to founding members, opens up a world of new possibilities.
Of note across the forest
- Over in clear.txt, Vinny wrote something striking about where "liberation" is heading in AI — specifically the parallel between Obliteratus (a tool that surgically removes refusal from AI models) and Google's new Workspace CLI (which gives AI agents access to your entire digital life). His read: the "free the models" crowd and the "make it frictionless" crowd are arriving at the same structural endpoint from opposite directions. High engagement, worth reading.
- Also in clear.txt: a piece on "beauty as strategy" that makes a case that the market is already correcting away from the trend economy — adult baptisms up fourfold in France, brick phone sales spiking among 18-24s, rural migration reversing. The question he ends on: what doesn't need to keep up?
- In Peripheral Forms, the week was spent chewing on the Slopist Manifesto and what it actually means — specifically, where judgment sits as a skill when machines can produce anything. Justice is moving fast on experiments: "I love a rapid prototype" is basically the ethos of that space right now.
- Worst Generation shared their 2026 vision: three interlocking properties — WGDF (the dark forest), WGRadio (episodic, GTA-style radio programming), and WGTV (a curated always-on television station). Four albums in the pipeline across the crew. Black Dave's framing of the collective as worldbuilding rather than just music is worth sitting with.
- Sounds of the Forest went deep on the Amen Break this week — Lena traced the full history of the drum loop that helped define breakbeat, jungle, and D&B, and connected it to her own story of digging for records.
Moments from NCE
- Kita Rancaño Ward is recruiting five founding members for the Distributed Craft Guild — a collective patronage experiment for living craft traditions.
- Robert wrote a speculative research memo set in 2028 imagining the aftermath of an AI layer that nuked ads from the entire internet overnight.
- Sahil posted visualizations of the "Post-Individual" essay — graphic design riffs translating the ideas into image.
- We've also made three groups within NCE: Forest Keepers, for people who want to help out the project; NCE Reading Club, an international book club; and NCE Journal, a new editorial/curatorial space. Feel free to hop in and click around!
That's the week.
See you in the forest.
