Thanks for the question.
It will be using Hive Signer for the initial release, however, extending that is possible in the future.
Each question and answer will be stored on-chain as either a comment or root post depending on user choice. Mongo is used for sorting, association, and a selection of custom features (answer requests, saved questions, etc), but each question and answer will be posted to the blockchain with enough information/context that they could stand alone without Quello as a front end.
By having our DB we'll also be able to introduce flexibility for voting and therefore ranking, this will mean that voting trails and stake don't necessarily mean that it's the best question or answer. Overall it will give more control to solves issues that pop up along the way.
With that said, if features on Hive become available to carry out more operations on chain (in a simple form), iterating the functionality will always be an option.
Thanks a lot for the answer! Sounds great. The hallmark of a decentralized application is not being completely reliant on a centralized back end. As you are naturally aware of, Hive can store text in JSON-format without it being a post. But storing some things in a proprietary database can confer some efficiency gains, to be sure.
Quello sounds precisely the kind of app that Hive needs. I like Quora very much but, regrettably, it's a centralized Web 2.0 application and has censorship going on and it only rewards for asking questions and very poorly at that. You have to be a partner to get rewarded for asking questions. The best earning partners earn about $3000 a month, which is only about three times as much as the best earning content creators on Hive - and, in fact, after the pump the best earning content creators may actually earn as much on Hive! Given that Quora has 300 million monthly active users whereas Hive has only 10,000 monthly active users, what Quora pays its users as contributions is totally pitiful. Hive pays 30,000 times better!
Your timing couldn't have been better. With extremely large numbers of people cooped up at home during the ongoing lockdowns, many people are asking about how to earn online. Posting questions and answers to Quello that the community finds valuable fits the bill perfectly.
There are countless people on Quora happily posting for free because they do not want to get paid for helping other people. Fine. But the economic value of their contributions does not go anywhere by them not wanting it. It's there and currently pocketed by the millionaire owners of a Web 2.0 corporation. These people are making a shitload of money on the back of other people's philanthropy. Quello's Web 3.0 model lets the valuable contributors to decide for themselves whether they want to give the value they create away, and if so, whether they want it to pay for some Silicon Valley investor's dreamboat or mansion or whether they want to delegate the Hive power to benefit some project that helps people in need.
I wish your project massive success!