Testnet Stage 5 is now live with enhanced gas management and improved transaction processing

Fellow Panthers,

First and foremost, thank you to the community of over 2500 testnet users who have been testing and sharing valuable feedback. Your continued support and patience are critically important to our mission.

Testnet Stage 4 is now complete, and it provided us with valuable insights, resulting in several updates to our codebase.

We are excited to announce that Stage 5 of our testnet is live. Stage 5 includes using a third party Bundler service (a.k.a Relayer) and supports gasless transactions via an Account Abstraction Paymaster contract. 

As we get closer to our upcoming mainnet launch, the team has been working on product improvements. In March, we released Enhancement Stage - 1, and the team has been working on more upgrades in parallel with Stage 5 and Stage 6 testnet development. Here’s an overview of the enhancements made:

Panther gas management: Users can now easily transfer funds between zAssets and their Panther Gas account. This feature is accessible by clicking the Panther Gas icon located in the top right corner of the screen (header).

UTXO consolidation for deposit: Consolidates a user’s balance into a single UTXO during deposit transactions, allowing users to use their entire balance in a single transaction, eliminating the need for additional Multi-Asset Shielded Pool (MASP) transactions to consolidate smaller UTXOs.
Detailed error messages: Provides users with informative error messages, improving the communication of transaction issues.
Real-time Data Synchronization: Updates to balances and vouchers are now visible in real-time, so you can make informed decisions quickly and, have greater transparency.
Faster wallet engine startup: Reduced startup time by optimizing the cold start phase.
Improved cold start times for wallets: The Create Block function is now incorporated into Panther Protocol, and cold start times are reduced.
Transactions continue even if you close your tab: Allows transactions to continue in the background, even if the user navigates away, improving transaction continuity.

Getting started with Stage 5 

To start testing Stage 5, visit here for the updated dApp test link and follow the steps.

Enhanced gas management

Panther has upgraded how you manage your gas costs by integrating with Etherspot’s Skandha ERC4337 Bundler service. With the integration, users will now be able to choose whether to turn this Bundler service on or off before every transaction.

When left on, the transaction will be sent through the new Bundler service and network gas cost will be deducted from user’s $ZKP balance within its Panther Gas Account.  When off, the transaction will go directly from the user’s EOA and the network gas fee will be paid from your connected wallet (metamask) in the native gas token.

Improved transaction processing

You may already be familiar with zMiner (formerly Oshiya/Miner), which efficiently processes batches of UTXOs, updating the Zero-Knowledge proof within a Merkle tree. This batch processing, on our Bus Tree, is cost-effective but introduces a delay. For those needing quicker processing times, we’ve introduced the Taxi Tree option, now live on the Mumbai testnet, enabling faster processing times akin to a taxi's speed.

In our updated user interface, you select between Regular Processing (Bus) and Fast Processing (Taxi) options. Also, in Stage 6, you'll have the ability to compare the network costs for both options, empowering you to make informed decisions based on speed and cost efficiency.

In addition, we have developed an exchange contract to facilitate the payment of Bundlers in native tokens. This contract enables the conversion of $ZKP to $Matic via Uniswap V3 on the Polygon network, streamlining transactions and enhancing our ecosystem’s functionality.

UTXO selection update

Due to the implementation of two processing modes for newly created UTXOs, there may be a brief period during which some UTXOs are not immediately available for use in subsequent transactions. This temporary limitation—lasting only a few minutes—persists until the Bus Queue or Miner processes the next queue. Specifically:

• UTXOs generated by two distinct FAST transactions cannot be spent together.
• UTXOs originating from a FAST transaction and a REGULAR transaction cannot be combined.

We want to make sure that you know that these restrictions are temporary, only affecting the period shortly after the creation of a UTXO through a FAST transaction. The limitations are related to the timing of using a UTXO generated by a FAST transaction with other available UTXOs. Importantly, these constraints do not mean that the FAST transaction did not work, and only have a temporary impact on using the output for subsequent transactions. 

Note: In this Stage, the fee component has not been fully integrated yet. Therefore, during testing, it is expected that transactions will be processed via Bundlers, and users will also be able to execute FAST transactions. The implementation of fee deduction and accurate fee calculations are forthcoming and will be introduced in Stage 6.

About Panther Protocol

Panther Protocol is a cross-protocol layer that uses Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology to build DeFi solutions that aim to meet ever-evolving regulatory standards while satisfying users’ on-chain data privacy needs. Panther’s goal is to enable seamless access to DeFi via a cross-chain-supported ZK compliance protocol. The Panther Protocol offers confidentiality across transactions in shielded pools, zSwap for DeFi integrations — enabling private swaps on third-party DEXs, and zTrade for internal OTC book for trading assets privately. Furthermore, Panther Protocol’s ZK primitives are generalizable to KYC, selective disclosures between trusted parties, private ID, voting, and data verification services.

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