Pod Faces: Your Community, Your Look
Security Improvements
A note from our Founder
Upcoming events
Your pod has its own culture. Now it can have its own face.
With this week's release, pod leaders can design a custom look for the app — and we mean yours: upload your community's own icons and logo to replace the home-screen buttons and navigation, and pair them with your own color scheme. Head to your pod's Manage → Modules and switch on Custom Appearance to open the design studio. Start fast with a curated palette like Ocean, Dusk, or Ember and a matching icon set — then make it truly yours by swapping in your own artwork, button by button, with a live preview as you work.
When a pod publishes a face, each member may choose whether to wear it. Tap Wear this look on the pod's page — or browse all your communities' looks under Identity → Appearance — and the whole app reshapes around you: your community's icons, your community's colors, even its logo on your home screen. One tap brings you back to the classic SpiritDAO green anytime.
Every published look is automatically checked against accessibility contrast standards, so beautiful never comes at the cost of readable.
And your pod's words, too. You asked for the natural next step, and it's here: pods can now rename the app's menu items. Maybe your community calls Bounties "Quests." Maybe Governance feels more like a "Council," or Chat is really the "Campfire." Now the app can say so. Leaders will find a Rename menu items section in the Face editor, right alongside colors and icons — type a new name for any home-screen button, watch the live preview update, and publish. Leave a field blank and it keeps the standard name.
Some of you will remember this as the "application skins" question we posed back in May: how do we meet communities where they are — with their own language, symbolism, and flow — without reducing the usability of the ecosystem? This is the answer, and it came straight from your feedback.
Same community. Same governance. Your experience, your choice — becoming more, together.
Pod leaders: Custom Appearance is live under Manage → Modules, and design permissions can be delegated to any role. Full guide at spiritdao.org/docs/pod-faces.html.
Rather than trust that our permission rules were enforced, we connected directly to the live database and tested them the way an attacker would. This surfaced the single most important fix of this round: the table that defines every pod's roles and permissions could, under the right conditions, be edited by any logged-in member (not just leaders). We closed that immediately, verified the fix against the live system (confirming a non-leader is now blocked while real leaders work normally), and then hardened every other data table to the same standard.
Wallet addresses: We discovered a subtle inconsistency in how wallet addresses were stored that could silently lock a legitimate pod leader out of their own tools. To address this we standardized every address and added database-level safeguards so this entire category of bug can never happen again, no matter how the platform grows.
Surveys now respect your custom roles. The survey feature was checking only for pod leaders rather than honoring custom roles like a delegated "Survey Manager." Now it works exactly as the permission system was designed. Your granular roles work end-to-end.
Treasury upgrade: fully completed. All pod treasuries are now migrated onto the upgraded, hardened treasury system, with on-chain confirmation that unauthorized fund movements are rejected everywhere. We also resolved a governance quirk that could have stalled treasury voting, so every pod can pass treasury decisions smoothly.
Contract-level polish. We tightened how token approvals are handled during purchases and made event registration and bounty bidding more efficient at scale; so the platform stays fast and secure as communities grow.
The takeaway: this round was about rigor. Every fix was verified against our live systems, not assumed correct. Where audit tools flagged concerns, we investigated each one; fixing the real gaps, confirming the false alarms. SpiritDAO's rules are now enforced consistently at every layer, with the flexibility of your custom roles fully intact.
I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts about context around our current direction and progress.
SpiritDAO originated as a vision laid out in the final chapter of Self-actualization in the Age of Crisis; a vision of communal structure that would fully embody the spiritual and philosophical orientation proposed in the text. A pathway towards realizing a vision of humanity that fully honored the latent divinity within ourselves and the other.
Since the initial book publication much as transpired, but today I remain as committed as ever to this mission. It is more real now than it's ever been, a live, self-changing system that honors the reality of individual and systemic actualization as a means of recognizing collective self-actualization. A federated infrastructure that empowers self-sovereign community construction and management, intercommunity currencies that blend historical fiat ($SYSTEM) with time-bound $SELF as a means to seed alternate economic orders. And so much more that combines with granular permissioning and a modular infrastructure management to avoid bloat.
The ecosystem that is presently live and being used by communities is far beyond what I had initially scoped and has reached a point of security, functionality, transparency, on-chain integration, and customization that I feel places SpiritDAO as a vanguard product in the community management/governance category. New features will continue to emerge as new communities join, custom suggestions arise, and innovations in AI continue to transform the boundaries of what is possible.
There are many builders in this space, acting as emergent nodes working towards a shared vision of the good (in various permutations) but ultimately fractured—and weaker because of it. It's not a critique as much as it is a call to action.
At this point in the journey I am looking for others to champion this effort and vision alongside me as co-owners / operators. As you're probably aware, SpiritDAO is a 501c3 nonprofit. We're looking to build a formal Board of Directors who will serve as our Executive Pod members. We're looking for other communities working in a similar direction who might want to integrate SpiritDAO into their efforts, both so they don't have to spend the focus and energy reinventing what is, but also so that they may play a role in shaping our direction and effort. To put it plainly, I'm looking for you to help me shape what is next.
SpiritDAO has always been about co-ownership, co-development, and co-creation. It is a place and space for those with the courage to act today, understanding that now is the most important moment we ever have to transform the world and ourselves.
If you have found yourself searching for the right opportunity to do good in the world, looking for partners to share in your vision of transformation, or simply looking for a non-extractive tech stack to empower yourself I sincerely hope you'll explore SpiritDAO and our efforts further.
The crisis is real, but so is the alternative. We're building it, together, in the open and there's a seat for you.
We strongly recommend registering for events within the SpiritDAO app (Events section) at app.spiritdao.org, it's how we gauge attendance and shape the flow of each session.
Town Hall — Mon, Aug 17th · 8:00 PM EST - A standing community gathering for conversation, questions, and shared presence. Join here
First Contact — Wed, Aug 19th · 8:00 PM EST - The official starting point for new members — a peer-to-peer orientation into how participation works. Join here
Feedback Loops — Fri, Aug 21st · 8:00 PM EST - A live working session where the community helps shape the app. Bring your bugs, your questions, and your ideas. Join here
SpiritDAO is 100% donor-funded. There are no subscriptions, no paywalls, no venture capital. Every community on this platform uses it for free and that's by design. Our runway is small, and every donation directly extends how long we can keep building. If this work matters to you, even a small contribution goes further than you'd think.
→ Donate at spiritdao.org/donate
SpiritDAO is a registered 501(c)(3). Your donation is tax-deductible. (EIN: 99-1308806)
The best way to get in touch is within our community: https://app.spiritdao.org
Or write to Ron Rivers: ron@spiritdao.org
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SpiritDAO is a registered 501(c)(3) EIN #99-1308806.