retro secrets

w ascii mountain
generate ascii page
social
matches re-hash of ASCII to original hash to determine authenticity
phantom wallet
solana verification
bye :)

Inspiration

ascii art is quite fascinating and nfts could be cooler so we decided to hide messages in plain sight using stenography with custom encryption and build a social platform

What it does

you get to create ANY ai-generated ascii art which you can then hide a secret message in for your friends and followers
gemini produces an artwork from the user's prompt and our prompt augmentation to produce a consistent fun aesthetic theme and an ascii-conversion optimized image
art is stored on the solana blockchain for verifiability of creation and release times and proof of ownership
the hidden message gets put into the colours of the ascii characters using LSB encoding and our custom AES encryption for symmetric message hiding and revealing
the nft art can serve a variety of purposes whether it be a GTA 6 game teaser or a postcard to your friend
social platform lets you doomscroll creations from friends and public accounts where you can interact with comments and get recommended art based on your interests from our clustering algorithm
the countdown timer adds suspense before the secret is shown and users can subscribe to interesting countdowns and return when they are unlocked
secure message transfer through nfts allows for true visible end to end encryption between friends

How we built it

frontend: next.js, ts, tailwind css, backend: fastapi (python), mongodb image generation: gemini 2.5 flash image, ascii-magic message hiding: AES encryption, LSB (least significant bit) encoding web3 integration: solana and the blockchain

Challenges we ran into

finding a method to generate ascii art, setting up the google ai studio, setting up the solana block chain coming up with an encryption formula that preserves the image and hides messages in plain sight

Accomplishments that we're proud of

successfully completed the platform with verifiable block chain transaction

What we learned

integration is hard but rewarding

What's next for retro secrets

after building this tech, we realized that beyond our social platform, there are many applications for our hidden in plain sight time activated message hiding.

examples:

a scavenger hunt or escape room could leave up prepared hints for lost players that get released at preset times.
Rock Star could release GTA 6 teasers with hidden messages dangling right in front of fans, which they can only see next year.
document memories, send postcards, create unchangeable new years resolutions for accountability

Cheers!