Turning up the heat — Panther partners with Firo for privacy research
Firo and Panther Forge Partnership
Here at Panther we are constantly thinking ahead. Our mission is to provide a private scalable infrastructure for smart contract platforms, DeFi and Web3 applications and accelerate the institutional adoption of decentralized finance in a private and compliant manner.
In our initial discovery calls with Firo it was clear from the start that we had found a like-minded collaborator. Firo, formerly known as Zcoin, has been developing cutting edge privacy technology since 2016, having created influential privacy protocols such as Lelantus and Lelantus Spark.
Some defensive projects would consider Firo as an adjacent competitor, but Panther believes privacy to be too important to become territorial.
We are thrilled to be doing poignant research together and exchange knowledge with such an accomplished team.
On Panther’s side, we bring to the table years of experience in the cryptography and cybersecurity space. Our CTO Dr. Anish Mohammed, for example, has 20+ years of experience in security and cryptography, was an early advisor to Ripple, reviewed the Ethereum orange paper, worked on several projects including Ocean and Boson and is the co-founder of the UK Digital Currency Association.
Another important mention is Dr. Arnold Yau, who has 20 years of career across academic research, defence R&D, hardware security tokens, financial services, blockchain technology and smart contract security. Dr. Yau has a PhD in Information Security from Royal Holloway, University of London.
Panther enables simple blockchain users, DeFi users, and institutions to exchange value across blockchains and DeFi infrastructure with zAssets: interoperable, fully collateralized privacy-enhancing digital assets that leverage zkSNARK technology while offering a novel price discovery mechanism for privacy.
For the Panther anonymity pools to function optimally, the size of the anonymity set in our shielded privacy pools is especially important, and one of the additional details of the partnership is that Firo holders will be able to act as privacy stakers and be rewarded for providing their assets into Panther vaults.
As a leading technology innovator, Firo designed a simple burn and spend model that strengthens privacy, while making it more broadly accessible. By guaranteeing financial privacy, Firo can directly guarantee fungibility, an essential property for free commerce.
Some areas of research where Firo and Panther want to collaborate are privacy technology research, cross-chain bridges and liquidity.
Reuben Yap, co founder and project Steward at Firo says:
“We welcome this opportunity. It is incumbent on advocates of privacy to travel together. Working with Panther, we will have a great opportunity to collaborate on our ZK technologies. Onboarding with Panther will also give us access to other chains and as a result, much increased liquidity.”
Oliver Gale, CEO of Panther welcomed the collaboration:
“At Panther we take our R&D very seriously. Working with Firo will be an interesting challenge. In some ways the Firo product is more like a competitor, but we are keen to trade Firo assets on our InterChain DEX. Both companies are dedicated to the defence of privacy and that creates our common bond.”
The partnership between Firo and Panther to provide technical collaboration and research between the two companies will look to develop new technology and invest in new ways of deploying zero knowledge proof systems relevant to privacy schemes. This will also allow for the movement of private Firo assets across chains.
Firo and Panther both advocate privacy as a fundamental human right and empower users to regain control of their money.
About Panther
Panther is a decentralized protocol that enables interoperable privacy in DeFi using zero-knowledge proofs.
Users can mint fully-collateralized, composable tokens called zAssets, which can be used to execute private, trusted DeFi transactions across multiple blockchains.
Panther helps investors protect their personal financial data and trading strategies, and provides financial institutions with a clear path to compliantly participate in DeFi.
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About Firo
Firo is a privacy-first digital currency that enables untraceable transactions and true financial freedom from the prying eyes of large corporations, financial institutions, and oppressive governments. Firo advocates privacy as being an expression of consent and enables users to regain control of their money. As a leading technology innovator, Firo’s research team has created the Lelantus and Lelantus Spark privacy protocols presenting a compelling trustless alternative that has influenced
To learn more, visit www.firo.org, follow us on Github, Twitter, Telegram, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.