Our quest for privacy — Development Update #1
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Dear Panther Community,
Our entire team has been working hard to build the foundational private scalable infrastructure for DeFi and Web3, but if one team has been working harder, that is our tech and product team.
Panther aims to privately connect all smart contract blockchains and restore privacy for retail and institutional decentralized finance participants
Our quest begins with some key components that together can become an end-to-end solution for privacy, much-needed privacy primitive for DeFi and Web3.
As you probably already know through the release of our Roadmap and MVP articles, our focus was placed on building the mission-critical zAssets minting & burning component, zAssets pools, Privacy relayers, the Privacy Staking module, the Token, allocation and vesting contracts of our ERC-20 $ZKP Token and its bridging to Polygon, where we will build our first release, as well as the beginning of logic for game-changing, voluntary and selective disclosure of transactions (not available on V1).
We also worked on the Initial setup of the DAO, the first version of the Panther wallet and the general concept for the protocol’s reward incentives mechanism.
Panther has been under design and development since May, but the update below will highlight what we have been focused on throughout most of Q3.
We have not shared too much in the past, but from here onwards the team plans on providing technical updates more frequently and with progressively higher resolution.
In DeFi, you need to have privacy to be able to protect your alpha. In the current state of affairs, this is difficult to sustain. Another important area of exploration for Panther is building MEV resistance solutions based on ZK rollups. We believe that the success of our value proposition is achieved through solving both privacy and trust challenges in DeFi — and the latter is possible via the novel selective disclosure mechanisms we propose.
Our goal with this development update is to engage and onboard with fellow privacy, decentralized finance and web3 champions from our community and attract friends hailing from other interesting projects. Defying the Privacy status quo of the entire world is a mission that can start with a passionate team of core devs but the truth is, we will build Panther together.
Defying the Privacy status quo of the entire world is a mission that can start with a passionate team of core devs but the truth is, we will build Panther together.
The development of the first set of functionalities and features proposed for the launch of our V1, and also to enable the Token Generation Event, are advancing full speed ahead. Our team has worked around the clock to successfully complete nine sprints and meet our objectives.
When we started working on the foundations of the protocol, and throughout most sprints, we referred to the first version of our product as the “MVP”. Now, as we get closer to wrapping this stage of product development, we are proud to acknowledge that the team’s dynamic capabilities are making Panther’s first release richer and more sophisticated than we could anticipate when we began our journey. We currently don’t think MVP is a proper description of our release to the public in the near future and are taking naming suggestions for our V1. :)
As we finish the last set of our technical sprints, we enter the integration and testing phases for each component. An external audit is planned to happen between the next 25–45 days, during which time we will be working closely with the auditors to incorporate and retest any suggested revisions and updates.
Let’s dive right into it.
Token Issuance, Token Vesting and Allocation contracts
These are critical contracts for a successful TGE and currently, these are marked done, waiting for the external audit to happen. A couple of minor revisions are expected, and in the case, larger revisions are needed, this is the right time to get it done.
DAO setup and Voting
Most of the work related to the DAO and Voting Mechanisms is completed. We hope to include the Staking module during the next sprints, which will enable users to stake $ZKP to be able to vote. We are also designing the details of the quadratic voting mechanism, which will enable a governance ethos that gives voice to smaller holders. For more on quadratic voting, read here.
Web application and the wallet’s UI
The Web application and the wallet’s UI is ready, with the logic still under development. Development of the zero-knowledge proof generation system is also in progress.
ZK circuits for the Shielded Pools
We have implemented ZK circuits for the Shielded Pools and are in the process of integrating the Circuits and Smart Contracts. Panther’s shielded pool is a multi-asset pool that significantly enhances our ability to scale privacy while improving privacy preservation at the same time.
Bridging Panther’s native token $ZKP
Work has started on bridging Panther’s native token $ZKP from Ethereum to Polygon. Panther’s native token $ZKP will be minted and vested on Ethereum as per the Vesting schedule. The allocation of $ZKP destined for Rewards will be bridged over to Polygon using the Polygon-Eth bridge to the Panther smart contract on Polygon. This Smart contract constantly supplies (single-sided liquidity in) $ZKP (but never withdraws it) to the AMM contract that is used to redeem rewards by the Users. More details will be published on Panther’s Rewards mechanism also referred to as Liquidity Staking. Rewards mechanism (AKA Privacy Staking)
We have completed the design of our Rewards mechanism (also referred to as Privacy Staking). A simulation model was also developed in C++.
Privacy Staking allows Users of the protocol to earn rewards by depositing digital assets into Panther’s Shielded Pools. The objective of the rewards mechanism is to ensure a high user count and sufficient TVL, which results in high anonymity set within the pool, which is critical to enabling privacy.
This is Panther’s way of incentivizing users to wish to strengthen privacy in DeFi. We intend to publish a separate piece with more details on our Privacy Incentive mechanisms — be on the lookout for Panther’s Privacy Staking program in a few weeks from now.
Disclosure Schemes
The initial phase of research around Disclosure schemes is done and we intend to do a POC before we move forward. The disclosure mechanisms of our first release will be limited to an incipient disclosure mode but as we accelerate the research and POCs to confirm the approach, we will enable advanced disclosure types such as selective disclosures and Zero-Knowledge Disclosures.
TestNet launch
Post Audit and updates, Panther will launch the protocol on the test net allowing the community to get a first-hand view of the product. We intend to launch an incentivized test-net program where the community will be incentivized for using Panther and providing relevant feedback. Panther will also do a test-net bug bounty program during this phase. We will announce more details about the program and timeline in due course.
Current Development Status :
For a visual cue into the status of the development, and next development milestones please refer to the Gantt Chart below:
And this wraps up our first development update!
We hope you enjoyed reading about Panther’s core development efforts as much as we have enjoyed building them.
We’re actively expanding our network and the core dev team continues to grow, fast.
We are currently onboarding and hiring additional research scientists, ZK Engineers, applied mathematicians and Full Stack/Solidity Developers that are already on the cutting edge of ZKP. Please refer to our Careers page for all opportunities. if you don’t find an opening that matches your skills but is passionate about privacy-enhancing technologies and believe you can support us in the rendering of our vision, please visit our Discord channel.
There’s a lot happening inside of Panther Protocol and as we get closer to the release of our V1, our public sale and subsequent TGE and the release of the DAO we can’t help but cherish the future of our project, knowing that the strength and work of the Panther community will play an increasingly important role in our development roadmap.
This post is intended to inform the community at large, but our ultimate goal is to spark interest in the minds of our developer community, which is going to be just as important, and one day even more important than the initial core team, as the development cycles go by.
Panther is being built from the ground up to be a decentralized project. We welcome and encourage questions, feedback and your participation in our Discord channel.
That process of progressive decentralization allows Panther to remain lean and focused at the core while providing the community and ecosystem at large with public goods that are critical to the preservation of on-chain privacy. We truly believe that we’re on a mission to restore a fundamental human right.
The vision of enabling anyone, anywhere, to privately access safe and reliable financial services regardless of nationality, age, race, or gender is a major driver for the Panther team.
As the crypto industry prepares to embark on a journey to onboard the first billion decentralized finance users (and beyond), a privacy-first ethos for developing Web3 and DeFi technologies is a must. There is a deep sense of urgency in the work we do. Enabling privacy in DeFi and Web3 is critical for protecting ourselves from becoming a surveillance society.
About Panther Protocol
Panther Protocol is an end-to-end privacy protocol for DeFi. Panther provides DeFi users with fully collateralized privacy-enhancing digital assets, leveraging crypto-economic incentives and zkSNARKs technology. Users are able to mint zero-knowledge zAssets by depositing digital assets from any blockchain into Panther vaults. zAssets will become an ever-expanding asset class for users who want their transactions and strategies the way they should always have been: private.
Panther is fully compatible with AML regulations globally through the use of the Panther Metastrate — a zero-knowledge data layer that enables users to disclose all or some of their transaction histories to parties of their choosing, either fully or through the use of zk attestations.
Want to learn more about it?
Check out our Whitepaper
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