Panther Privacy for DeFi users on Harmony

Funding Proposals
1

Name of Project / DAO / Company

Panther Protocol

Application type

Grant

Proposal overview

Panther is an interoperable privacy solution focused on the needs of decentralized finance traders and investors. Due to the immutable and transparent nature of public blockchains, DeFi users are subject to surveillance and economic espionage. Transactional privacy is in high demand, as it allows retail, whales, and institutional users to protect their competitive advantages by not allowing adversaries to reverse engineer and front-run their strategies. Traders lose their alpha very quickly in DeFi and one of Panther’s strongest value propositions is to help traders protect that alpha.

Panther allows users to mint fully collateralized private assets called zAssets, private synthetics of any digital asset - think zETH and zUSDT. Users deposit their digital assets in a vault and receive zAssets in their Panther wallet. Such zAssets can be confidentially routed through the Panther network for use across all of DeFi.

Current Status:

  • Public sale and launch of Panther token/vesting and staking rewards - November, 2021
  • Protocol launch on test net - December, 2021
  • Protocol launch on MainNet - expected January, 2022

Panther will build the core Privacy Protocol on Harmony which will enable privacy for the assets transacted on Harmony. This core solution will then be further integrated:

  1. DeFi on Harmony for Institutional Business
  2. Panther’s private Interchain Transfer

Panther core privacy solution - Deliverable 1

  • Identity (user address) and Transaction Privacy
    Panther facilitates privacy whilst retaining trust. Any user can privately mint, burn and transfer zAssets in a permissionless fashion at any time, without being forced to prove anything. All zAsset transactions are associated with a cryptographically concealed, abstract representation of user identity. The native token holders will be drawn by both the trustless design and the privacy offering provided to ONE holders’ transactions and user addresses on Harmony.

  • Panther Decentralized Web Application
    dApp support with inbuilt Wallet feature to support privacy.

  • Multi Asset Shielded pools
    Multi-Asset Shielded pools will enable multiple tokens to be mixed in one pool thereby increasing the efficiency and privacy guarantees to the Users.

  • Panther Privacy Rewards
    Users staking assets and transacting inside Panther pools are rewarded with PRP’s (Panther Reward) which can be converted to $ZKP by a robust quasi AMM process.

Integrations and enhancements to Panther Core - Deliverable 2

  • DeFi Integration
    Panther will build adapters for seamless integration to enable private DeFi with at least one DeFi protocol on Harmony.

  • ZK Services with decentralized storage
    Storing data and ZK proofs to enable KYC and other verification methods. Users have control of their data and provide just the proofs when required.

    • Resulting in increased utility for the protocol and value for leveraging Harmony network as a bridge to DeFi.
    • Resulting in greater utility to institutions (i) seeking to mitigate counterparty risks and (ii) requiring adequate anti-surveillance to execute proprietary alpha generating strategies on the DeFi (public) ecosystem.

  • Confidentiality with Compliance
    Harmony users, upon entering the DeFi ecosystem, will benefit from privacy provided by the Panther integration due to the compliant nature of the “selective disclosure” privacy setting. This represents a natural onramp and offramp to privacy and decentralized finance. Integrating Panther’s features will make it simpler for institutions, already integrated with chain analytics service providers, to rapidly audit transactions, redeploy capital, and address treasury management needs with standard expectation velocity around transaction settlement timelines, all while having anti-surveillance alpha protection simply by on ramping through Harmony. By contrast, if an institution chooses an alternative onramp, without privacy, then it is vulnerable to surveillance and other alpha-eroding attacks; for example, front running, back running and sandwich attacks.

Team

Panther Protocol’s core team is made up of cryptographers, engineers and security experts with experience building over 55 blockchain protocols and DeFi applications.

  • Oliver Gale, CEO/Co-Founder - serial entrepreneur and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pioneer with a decade of experience building blockchain projects, cooperating with policy makers and central bankers, including the IMF, ITU and UN, as well as providing thought leadership at MIT and Columbia University.

  • Dr. Anish Mohammed, CTO/Co-Founder - 20+ years in security and cryptography, is an early advisor to Ripple, reviewer of the Ethereum orange paper, worked on several projects including Ocean and Boson, and is the co-founder of the UK Digital Currency Association.

  • Vadim Konstantinov, Chief Architect - DevOps, CIO and Architect in cloud services, fintech, and blockchain projects since 2014. His 30 years experience entails space vehicles engineering, accounting, and managing businesses in C-level executive roles (UFC and Rabobank).

  • Ramadan Ameen, CFO/COO - former US Air Force Major and start-up fractional CFO. 5 years at BlackRock working front, middle, and back office with institutional relationships across the institutional spectrum.

  • Adam Spiers, Senior Architect - 25+ years in Open Source software engineering/architecture, specializing in blockchain, Linux, enterprise infrastructure, distributed systems, and automation.

  • Saif Akhtar, Head of Product - 17+ years in developing, managing and creating innovative solutions in IT/software products and solutions. Driving the enterprise blockchain Center of Excellence in the mobility, supply chain, and logistics space before moving to DeFi in 2020.

  • Dr. Arnold Yau, Lead Cryptographer - 20 years of career across academic research, defense R&D, hardware security tokens, financial services, blockchain technology and smart contract security, and more. PhD in Information Security from Royal Holloway, University of London.

  • Sulejman Sarajlija, Software Engineer - Software engineer working full-time as a blockchain developer for several years.

  • Alex Hong, Senior Blockchain Engineer - 10+ years of experience as a software engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the blockchain industry on innovative projects like Cream Finance and Game Credits.

  • Aleksandar Djordjevic, Front-End DApp Engineer - Senior Software Developer with vast experience in front-end and blockchain eco-systems. Worked on different tech stacks across different chain protocols. Skillful in Ethereum and Cardano chains. Been a part of few successful blockchain startups as an early employee.

  • Chris Folta, Head of User Experience - 17+ years experience as a creative director specializing in brand development and strategy, UI/UX, and product design with a deep focus on privacy protocols, DAOs, and the DeFi ecosystem.

  • Tee Ganbold, CCO - Technology Executive with a broad experience both as an operator and investor in digital assets companies such as Fabric Ventures, ConsenSys, Intrepid Capital Partners, and Clear AI.

  • Andrew Zapotochnyi, Head of Marketing - Blockchain entrepreneur with a 10 year career that includes launching projects for innovative blockchain companies (Ambisafe, BlockGeeks, Cointraffic), global brands (KFC, Budweiser, and TD Bank), and universities/government clients (The City Of Toronto).

  • Bruno Ahualli, Marketing Advisor - Serial entrepreneur, 20+ years in executive roles. Led marketing at Boson Protocol and founded and exited 3 marketing boutiques. Built and operated multiple D2C brands.

  • Dr. Akaki Mamageishvili, Game Theory Advisor - Theoretical computer scientist, focused on game theory and particularly mechanism design, both the theoretical and practical aspects of it.

Proposal ask

  • Deliverable 1 - $250K USD
  • Deliverable 2 - $150K USD

Justification

Please see cost break down here - Harmony - Cost Breakdown - Google Sheets

Metrics for success

Panther is proposing two separate deliverables as mentioned above. The dates mentioned below are tentative and subject to Harmony’s readiness for Ethereum bridge and ZK libraries.

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External links

Website - https://www.pantherprotocol.io/
Deck - DocSend
Whitepaper - DocSend

2

This is interesting. How long will it take to built on Harmony? And will regulators be okay with this project?~chuck

3

Thank you for submitting a proposal to Harmony’s $300M Ecosystem Fund

We are in the process of reviewing your proposal. We would also love :blue_heart: to have the Harmony community participate to ask questions and provide feedbacks.

If you have more details to add, please do so by replying to this thread.

4

@Keaneau thank you for the proposal. As per the guidelines, and due to the ask amount, this would fall under the Investments track.

Please note we do not lead investments. However, if you already have a lead investor, we could consider a $100k follow-on at the same terms as your other investments.