Building My Own Image Engine "HakoNyans": I Beat PNG, but WebP is a Wall

Hi DEV community! 👋 I originally started developing a custom image engine called HakoNyans for a DEV Challenge. The challenge has ended, but my passion hasn't—I'm still actively building and refining it every day. The Milestone: Beating PNG I'm happy to report that HakoNyans has officially surpassed PNG! Getting the architecture and logic right to beat such a classic, widely-used format was a huge milestone for this project. The Current Struggle: The WebP Wall However, my next target is WebP, and let me tell you... WebP is incredibly strong. Here is where HakoNyans currently stands against WebP: Processing Speed: Currently 20% slower. Compression Ratio: Losing by 20% (resulting in larger file sizes). I've hit a bit of a wall. Competing with WebP's highly optimized compression logic is no easy task. Closing this 20% gap in both speed and size is my current obsession. Let's Discuss! I'm continually pushing the limits of my current algorithms, but I'd love to hear from the community. Has