A Web3 social media utility app on iOS where you can upload, manage, and share all your media on IPFS directly from your phone.
A large and growing percentage of social media content (images, videos, etc) is made directly on mobile devices. I'd venture to say almost all of it is made on mobile devices and when I find that report I will link it here). Of the people creating that media, some smaller percentage them care about their media being hosted on the decentralized web (Web3). Our belief is that a percentage of those people care enough to use an app that lets them upload their media to IPFS and back it with Filecoin storage. We hope that these people might also be willing to pay for this app and service in some way. So put it another way, the initial target audience for users of Datapult are people on "crypto Twitter" (which TIL; is just regular Twitter but like they just talk about crypto currency all the time). These decentralized-maximal-futurists would be willing to use Datapult when they post because to them, using decentralized storage is important.
Datapult will be an iOS app that lets people share files. It will only be available on iOS initially. To make it integrate as easily as possible with social media apps it will use share extensions that are part iOS. With this iOS feature in the app users can "datapult" their files from any app that supports sharing. When someone shares through Datapult, the app creates a unique link that the user can paste into a social media app/site. The image they shared to Datapult is stored on IPFS using Web.Storage and backed to Filecoin. The image is processed by Datapult backend services and a social card is created. The app will also alow people to manage the files they have uploaded. They will be able to add, update, delete or extend storage contracts directly from the app. Any service fees can be paid directly in Ethereum by deep linking payment requests directly to the Metamask iOS app. And since Apple has recently been forced by the courts to allow linking to "alternative payment" we believe that this is a new opportunity for the use of crypto currency for payment of digital services inside iOS apps.
In the animated walk-through shown here we are showing the larger context for the usage of Datapult. We feel that there is a need by people to use Web3 for more of their day-to-day storage needs. One very common day-to-day task on a mobile device is sharing a photo. We hope that we can convince people to use Datapult to share photos when they post them publicly on social media. The design challenge is the understanding that we are asking our users to perform an additional step when sharing an image online. We want to make that experience feel as snappy as possible.
Datapult has a release window of late 2021 and we need help! Please use the feedback form on this page to request early access to the alpha version to get on the wait-list. The alpha will be on iOS only and provide up to 1TB of free storage on Filecoin backed IPFS.
We are always interested in hearing thoughts and feedback from the community. If you have anything you'd like to share please use the feedback form on this page. Someone from TeamZero will get back to you as soon as we can.
What can we learn from the Twitter Data api and how can we use it to validate our assumptions about the potential market for Datapult as a product.
Behind the scenes... view an early mockup used during our design process to visualize the app user experience.
Fleek is new and cool and all on Web3! This article explores how to use Fleek to build a social media friendly image preview using Fleek and Web3.storage.
This article is a discussion of the key feature for Datapult, walk through of the critical feature in early design sketches.
So you're putting your files out on IPFS. That's great! But other than minting NFTs what else can you do? In this article we talk about how Datapult helps with this problem.
A review of some Web3 storage providers and their features set support for creating Datapult. It covers some of what is out there and which ones we have looked at so far.
Brian has been building consumer web and mobile products since 2000. Now in the Web3 space he is looking to bring his product engineering skills to the distributed web. His interests are in protocol development, applied cryptography, decentralized storage, hardware and software prototyping.
T.J. specializes in defining successful products and experiences, building effective prototypes and tests, and improving product development processes through collaboration. :)
