Thank you for your thorough inquiry about Bleep!
i.) We are currently not financed by any institution or group of private investors. All funding used to support the growth of Bleep! is coming out of our own personal finances. The purpose behind our social networking platform is not to extract value or amass wealth, but rather provide an ethical social media alternative that will promote global unity and cultural acceptance around the world.
ii.) ckBTC is used for all transactions within our applications, such as when purchases/bids on posts are being made. We have chosen ckBTC as the main mode of transacting, as it allows for low latency transactions with negligible fees. Furthermore, through the chain-fusion technology of the IC, users can natively deposit BTC into their canisters whereby it will be converted into ckBTC through the ckBTC minter(vice versa for withdrawals). Our intent is to leverage the fast deterministic execution of IC subnets, the abstraction of chain fusion technology, and the credibility of Bitcoin, to onboard both web2 and web3 audiences by providing a more secure/ethical form of social networking with universal monetization rights(as soon as a user creates an account, they are eligible to be monetized, regardless of their region or the payment methods available to them).
iii.) Yes, most mentioned functionality is currently available within Bleep! Android/iOS. Such encompasses our stochastic pagination algorithm, redistribution mechanism, perceptual hasher, post creation, commenting, liking, tokenized reporting etc…
Currently purchasing/bidding on other’s posts is unavailable, due to Play Store/App Store guidelines which require us to integrate their IAPs in all NFT transactions. However, we are currently working on a new payment processing pipeline compatible with Google/Apple IAPs, that will allow users to purchase a virtual currency through Apple Pay/Google Pay/Debit/Credit card, which will then be used for inter-canister transactions(more details can be provided upon request).
Please note, all mentioned functionality within our manifesto is already available on Bleep! web, however we plan to do a major UI overhaul in order to improve UX, as currently it is unoptimized for mobile/low-end desktop devices.
iv.) The supported filetypes for posts within BleepApp are images, videos, text. The maximum file size for an image or text-based post is 2MB, and for videos it’s 25MB. However, if media(image/video) that exceeds our upload size limits is selected for post creation, we first pass it through a progressive compression algorithm in order to try to make it fit within a valid upload size range.
Videos with audio are supported, however standalone audio file formats(ex: mp3, wav etc…), are currently unsupported for post creation.
We recently received feedback from community members that were having issues with uploading high-resolution images. Therefore, it is likely that in next update to our Bleep! iOS/Android build, we will increase the image file size limit to 10MB.
Additionally, for Bleep! iOS we support the .m4a(MPEG-4 Audio) file format, when creating comments. Comments within Bleep! iOS are speech-based(audio recordings), in order to allow content creators and their audience to form stronger interpersonal bonds built upon more genuine interaction.
v.) The core functions of our platform are handled through IC canisters, encompassing our redistribution mechanism, analytics, storage of listed posted(active bids, user canister association, removal of abusive content etc…), storage of user data(post signatures, username, withdrawal address, clout score computations), transaction handling(inter-canister calls to ckBTC ledger), storage of binary signatures computed through our perceptual hasher(used to perform XOR operations to determine hamming distance when analyzing originality of to be posted media), storage of usernames, content recommendation algorithm(stochastic pagination), search functionality, storage of DAO proposals.
Some parts of our backend are off-chain, as we rely on Google’s cloud storage services in order to store the raw data associated with each post. Such was done to reduce latency when fetching media(take advantage of Google’s edge infrastructure), and minimize storage costs. Furthermore, we utilize cloud functions running on centralized servers, in order to send push notifications to iOS/Android devices.
vi.) The stochastic pagination content recommendation algorithm can not be disabled, in order to maintain the integrity of our platform and ensure culturally diverse feeds. In the future, we plan on implementing a more robust content recommendation algorithm, that prevents self-radicalization loops and allows for a variable amount of personalization. However currently, in order to ensure that we build a community built upon cultural acceptance void of radicalization & extremism, our rudimentary unbias content recommendation algorithm will be a mandatory feature within Bleep!.
vii.) Currently discoverability within our platform is largely based on the recency of a post, in tandem with an amount of randomization. You can search for a specific user or post within Bleep!, by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the bottom right corner of each post. You will be prompted to enter a post name, or the name of the user you are looking for(you can change your search mode to be “user” or “nft”(post-specific) using the button above the search input bar). Alternatively, at the bottom of each post, you can click on the profile picture of the owner, in order to see all content posted by the corresponding creator.
Please note, searches can be based on keywords, and do not have to be precise usernames or the names of posts. However the search term must be a substring of the post name/username.
viii.) We currently do not have a publicly available portal to view analytics related to Bleep! . Currently our community has not shown much interest in the viewing of Bleep!-related analytics, therefore we have prioritized the development of other Bleep! milestones requested by our users(UI/UX improvements, fiat onramper, commenting functionality etc..).
ix.) Bleep! is not vibe coded, all of our codebases have been developed by our team. Such includes our decentralized backend, centralized cloud storage services, web frontend built using react-three/fiber, iOS frontend built using SwiftUI and reliant upon IcpKit for CBOR serialization/deserialization when communicating with IC boundary nodes, Android frontend built using Jetpack compose & reliant upon ICP-Kotlin-Kit for communication with IC boundary nodes.
Kind regards,
Wish