Ice Open Network Weekly Roundup: Ecosystem Update and Online+ Beta Progress

As always, Ice Open Network has maintained a steady stream of updates, fuelled by its Online+ Beta progress reports, and community engagement. This weekly roundup compiles the latest developments from the past week, spotlighting advancements in its flagship product, feature enhancements, and bug resolutions. 

The Layer 1 blockchain platform remains committed to delivering the best version of the application, aiming to redefine social networking in the Web3 era.

Introducing the Online+ Unpacked Series

The ION X account has remained active as expected, with a focus on development, community support, and preparations for the Online+ launch. The protocol utilizes this strategy to build hype while addressing real-time feedback in the competitive decentralized social media space.

Speaking of hype and real-time feedback, on July 18, the team announced a new initiative similar to the just-concluded deep dive series. The latest "Online+ Unpacked" series promises to reveal the inner workings of the Online+ product, sharing key information for users in the blockchain industry. The inaugural article explained Online+ as a decentralized, mobile-first platform for content sharing, including stories, articles, videos, and posts. It stands apart from traditional social media by granting users full data ownership via blockchain security and portability. 

Online+ offers multiple features, including encrypted chats, an integrated wallet, and dApp discovery, which enable direct value exchanges through tipping, boosting, subscriptions, and creator coins powered by $ION tokens. The platform's transparent microtransactions burn 50% of fees while allocating the remainder to creators, referrers, and network nodes. Additional perks include auto-minted creator coins, 10% lifetime referral commissions, and user-customizable feeds, all designed for accessibility without requiring advanced crypto expertise. 

Moving forward, ION will release the next installment of the Unpacked series, focusing on user profiles within Online+. 

In-Depth Look at the Online+ Beta Bulletin

The centerpiece of this week's update arrived on July 21 with the latest Online+ Beta Bulletin, penned by ION's Product Lead, Yuliia. This report detailed substantial progress, as the team recorded several tweaks, while shifting to final regression testing and performance refinements.

"We’re deep in the final stretch now — focused on wrapping regression testing, tuning performance, and making sure the app runs smoothly across all kinds of devices and accounts." Reflecting on the workload, Yuliia added, "Last week was a big one for the team: 71 tasks closed, a record for us (we usually hit around 50). I honestly thought we couldn’t push the pace any further — but here we are, sprinting through the final tasks and pulling everything into place." 

The bulletin provided an overview of the team's achievements, noting that all core features are now fully integrated. Efforts are now concentrated on ensuring seamless operation across devices and user accounts. This involves refining the UI, eliminating bugs in edge cases, and strengthening module integrations with production systems.

Feature updates covered several areas:

• Authentication: Implemented auto-follow functionality for referral-based sign-ups, where new users automatically follow their referrers.
• Wallet: Added visual cues for new transactions and verified badges in the friends section, complete with profile redirects.
• Chat: Enhanced media menu accessibility, introduced GIF support for Android devices, and enabled reaction additions via taps on existing reactions.
• Feed: Refined backend logic to boost topic relevance and overall performance.
• Profile: Conducted in-depth analysis of performance and memory usage to optimize loading and stability.

Bug fixes were extensive, tackling issues across modules:

• Authentication: Corrected a SendEventException error during user registration.
• Wallet: Resolved problems with Cardano transactions lingering in "In progress" status, zero-balance displays for SEI, sluggish UI on transaction details, NFT list scrolling lags, and pending transactions requiring app restarts.
• Chat: Fixed disappearing IONPay messages after cancellations, background glitches in multi-user sharing, extended sharing durations, media removal inefficiencies, video cancellation UI issues, multiline message overflows, mention-related glitches, fullscreen media deletions, and flickering post-actions.
• Feed: Made app deeplinks functional, eliminated topic category counts, centered story loaders, corrected video gradients, aligned post icons and numbers, blocked redundant photo library requests, fine-tuned line spacing and paddings, ensured unique user selections, fixed notification links, and prevented audio carryover between stories.
• Profile: Addressed background refresh failures in privacy settings, blocked emojis in website URLs, fixed empty follower/following lists, enabled name edits, halted video playback in settings, eliminated overlapping audio, and resolved "User relays not found" errors along with follow issues.
• General: Corrected misdirected push notifications and ensured delivery when the app runs in the background or the device is locked.

Looking ahead, the team outlined plans for comprehensive regression testing, additional bug fixes, and final integrations to ensure stability in production environments. 

Final Thoughts 

The Ice Open Network's progress with Online+ signals a shift toward user-centric, decentralized social platforms. By integrating blockchain for secure, sovereign digital interactions, ION addresses common pain points in traditional networks, such as data privacy and algorithmic biases. The $ION token's role in enabling monetization tools, including creator coins and referrals, could attract content creators and investors alike.

This weekly update showcases ION's agile development approach, incorporating beta tester feedback to refine the dApp. As the launch nears, users interested in blockchain social media will closely monitor how Online+ performs in real-world adoption.

For those interested in the Ice Open Network, stay tuned to @ice_blockchain on X.