Traditional Dream Factory - Abela, Portugal
= "web3-powered regenerative village" in Abela, Portugal
URL = https://www.traditionaldreamfactory.com/
Description
"A burgeoning web3-powered regenerative village, shepherded by an inclusive and indomitable community fighting for better. Shared between 80-100 villagers, members will co-live purposefully in tune with the earth’s cycles, co-create in a space that will help them foster their own dreams, and empower them to drive positive change, together.
We may be dreamers and futurists, but our dreams are rooted in realism. A new life of regeneration and co-living is waiting, and it starts at TDF in Abela.
In 2020, we set our sights on a small, arid plot of land in the village of Abela, Portugal. Home to an old poultry farm, the land is surrounded by beautiful hills and valleys, protected oak trees, a flowing river, an earth-built farmhouse, and the old community mill.
This poultry farm is our playground for change. The ground is ready to be relearned, rewilded and reincarnated into a brighter, abundant future."
(https://www.traditionaldreamfactory.com/)
Status
2025
Samuel Delesque:
"In practical terms, the key indicator of success for TDF is how much of the water can we retain for long enough for the land to drink it.
In 2025, our social and economic progress was great. But the thing that got me most excited is that not only were we able to keep our trees alive and thriving.. ahem. Let me take that back for a brief moment. Our jungle hedges suffered. It was another record summer, and our land team had planned a flood irrigation system for the jungle hedge. Given how qualified this team was I gave them full trust. The problem was that all they knew of TDF was muddy, drenched land. How could they imagine what it looks like after 6 months of no rain? Our human brains are just not geared well to imagine radically shifting baselines. Just like it is impossible to fathom for us what a world with 20x more fauna and flora would look like - because this world has been lost over many generations of humans. Yes we’ve lost 95% of life over the past millennia. What used to be wild, is now pasture, animal farms, and concrete jungles. 95% of the mass of animals on earth are humans and their food farms.
So, our jungle hedges suffered a bit, but nothing dramatic and we’ve managed to correct it. In the meantime all our forests entered an accelerated growth curve. Our spiral garden which was planted in 2024 exploded. The Australian pines planted into 3m of topsoil from earthworks around the lake grew to >5m in one year. The 1.2 million liters of rain we harvested got used for irrigation. We emptied our 500m3 pool into our forest. By late August we had not yet touched our groundwater - no borehole, no well. The result? Where the water table in our wells was 20m below the ground in the previous years - in 2025 it sat at just 3m below the ground! That might not sound so impressive, but now imagine you are a thirsty tree. It hasn’t rained in over 5 months. Your roots have been finding their way into the earth for several years and found cracks through the rocks now letting you find some moisture 2m below the ground. For you this isn’t just a nice metric, it’s survival (and that’s without humans drip feeding you).
In the fall of 25, we continued tending to our forests and replanting every dead tree. We introduced a few more micro forest areas: a berry/chestnut garden under our lake, prepared more banana planting holes, prepared soil for our vineyard, planted more of our swales etc. We built more accommodations for more people to live here comfortably. We upgraded our coworking and cafe building - and hosted our first markets there bringing not just TDF but all of Abela together. We finally built our mushroom farm - another element of resilience, and another hard build story. We lost our lead builder in the process. When we covered it in soil to make a green roof, parts of the foundations sunk and the walls caved in. But we will finish it soon nonetheless. We dug another 4 micro ponds, increasing our water holding capacity to 1.5 million litres. We upgraded our water infrastructure even further so we can seamlessly harvest as much rainwater as desired (seemingly as we have been having constant streams of water over the winter)."
(https://traditionaldreamfactory.substack.com/p/tdf-2026-an-honest-note-on-regeneration)
The plans for 2026
Samuel Delesque:
"Over the coming year, we are fundraising the next trenches of capital that will unlock TDF becoming a thriving economy. We are working through some final requested engineering challenges posed by the municipality, but overall we are largely ready to complete our build over the next year.
We’ve devised the raise in 4 stages:
Consolidate all the assets under the company. When I initially found this land, I had the privilege to take the risk and acquire the buildings on my own. This enabled us to have the previous 5 years of grassroots, unbounded creative playground. When our first shareholders joined the initial company (that later was converted into tokens) - they brought only €20k, while I provided an additional €30k to set up our company’s initial minimum €50k share capital. Liquidity was tight, so the company was never able to prioritise repaying me for the initial investment. Instead we spent incoming resources to build real assets. Now that we are looking at working with larger capital providers such as banks etc, it is time to finally execute the option to buy the company holds. I’ll personally be providing an additional loan to the company to facilitate the transfer of the asset - but the rest must come from community funding.
The late storms showed our roofs were not quite waterproof enough to prevent our interiors from taking damage. At the same time, our partners at Kinterra have helped us secure a deal for solar panels at cost. So we are turning this into a win-win-win opportunity: we intend to cover all roofs with solar, creating an additional water proofing layer, while creating enough energy capacity to feed our consumption for the next decades, with enough to spare to generate €7k+ in annual energy revenue from selling to a future micro-grid we are planning in Abela.
Then it’s time to build the real business potential. Starting with food, because for a rather reasonable amount of capital we can build a licensed 30 seat restaurant that will have a secured internal demand, a steady supply of fresh veggies and mushrooms to transform and export as delicious farm to table meals that will drive a solid revenue line for TDF. But it doesn’t end there. By moving the kitchen, we free up spaces for our 4 artists studios, and our music studio already has a taker with James who’s hosting Harmonia soon, and who will bring his studio equipment to create a live-in recording studio on the ground.
Finally, as the wrapping piece that we’ve been waiting for so long, comes the core revenue driver for TDF -the suites. It’s not a small investment to build hospitality grade units fitting all the requirements. But this piece will also be co-financed either by EU grants or by banks (both in progress)."
(https://traditionaldreamfactory.substack.com/p/tdf-2026-an-honest-note-on-regeneration)
Discussion
Fair Distribution of AI-Generated Value
Samuel Delesque:
"One of the biggest unanswered questions in AI is: Who captures the value?
In extractive systems, AI concentrates wealth upstream—platform owners, model providers, capital holders.
In regenerative systems, value must flow differently.
By tying governance, access, and rewards to:
- presence
- contribution
- ongoing participation
The OASA - Open Autonomic Settlement Association and Closer create a framework where:
- AI-generated efficiencies reduce collective burden
- gains are reinvested into land, infrastructure, and people
- those who maintain ecosystems share in the upside
This is not “AI ethics” as policy. It is AI economics embedded in governance design."
(https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-governance-requires-you-show-up-samuel-delesque-bpnwe/?)
More information
- Proof of Presence
- The Closer human-centered AI governance platform
- OASA Association