What is the Difference between FireAlpaca and MediBang Paint?

FireAlpaca is the same base application as MediBang Paint (medibangpaint.com), as hinted by its native format having the file extension .mbp. Their difference seems to be that MediBang Paint has cloud storage features.

FireAlpaca is the main development paint program, so it gets new features weeks or months sooner (such as the new 3D snap layers and mesh transform features), and it also has features that might not ever be added into MediBang Paint Pro, such as the onion skin animation features (or maybe the 3D and mesh transform features? We do not yet know if these features will make it into MediBang Paint).

https://www.tumblr.com/everythingfirealpaca/155100298272/whats-the-difference-between-medibang-and (accessed 2024-06-28)

History

Although it's not made very clear anywhere exactly what their relationship is, we can figure it out by playing Internet detective.

For instance, I found this article posted in 2014-11-27 on their website:

CloudAlpaca Released!

With more than 1.9 million downloads, the world’s most loved paint tool ‘FireAlpaca’.
ClouldAlpaca has been released retaining the same features of FireAlpaca and manga creation software that will satisfy pros.
Containing the same functions, the best Manga software that even pros satisfy with, ‘CloudAlpaca’ has been released!!

https://medibangpaint.com/pt/news/2014/11/ca/ (accessed 2024-06-28)

This doesn't make a lot of sense in English, but I imagine this is trying to say a product called CloudAlpaca was released, which is FireAlpaca with cloud features.

.Then I found this passage in Chinese on their website, on what appears to be a popularity contest of their mascot characters:

如果是MediBang的初代粉絲應該認識它！？ Cloud Alpaca，又名 「Cloudpaca」。自從2015年6月改名為「MediBang Paint」後甚少出場的角色，但草泥馬還是很可愛的對吧？

https://medibang.com/contest/6th_anniversary/?locale=zh_tw (accessed 2024-06-28)

I do not speak Chinese, so I used Google translate to figure out what it says—computers do not speak Chinese either, so it badly translated everything—but it seems that Cloud Alpaca (or Cloudpaca) was renamed to MediBang Paint in 2015-06. When it was renamed, the "Cloud Alpaca" mascot, which was an alpaca mascot with a cloud behind it, stopped making appearances.