Panther Protocol x Satoshi Club AMA Recap from 14th of October

Hello, Satoshi clubbers! Another AMA took place in Satoshi Club and we would like to introduce to you the AMA session with our friends from Panther Protocol and our guests were @andrewzap, and @Consanto — representative of Panther Protocol. The AMA took place on the 14th of October.

The total reward pool was 500$ and has been split into 3 parts.

In this AMA Recap, we will try to summarise the most interesting points for you.

Part 1 — introduction and questions from the Website

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Hello Satoshi Club! We are happy to announce our AMA session with Panther Protocol! Welcome to Satoshi Club

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Hello again, dear Satoshi Club community!

Today our guests are @andrewzap @Consanto

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
@GoldRocket27 greetings!

Constantinos:
Hi everyone! excited to be here with you!

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Hello and welcome to Satoshi Club, guys

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Hello, guys! Happy to see you here!

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Nice to e-meet you

Mary | Satoshi Club:
How’s going?

Let’s start our AMA session

Constantinos:
It going well! Super busy in anticipation of the public sale!

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Oh, exciting times

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Oh … hot time

Mary | Satoshi Club:
And we will start our AMA with the introduction!

Constantinos:

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Introduce yourself, please. How did you get to be involved in crypto & Panther Protocol
Tell us please about your position in Panther Protocol

Constantinos:
Great! My name is Constantinos Antoniou, and I am handling all of the community aspects of Panther. I’ve been involved and Co-founded local communities in my country Cyprus. Organized a few conferences and I’ve been advising projects in terms of marketing and community. I was also the head of research at D-CORE, a crowdsourcing platform where we research and analyze Blockchain projects.

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
I’m the head of marketing at Panther Protocol.

I’ve been in the blockchain space full time for the last five years and headed marketing at Ambisafe back in 2017, headed marketing at Propy.com, bootstrapped a couple of my own marketing blockchain-specific ventures.

Back in 2017 I came up with the Digital Independence Declaration idea (digindec.com) that brought me to Panther Protocol. I do believe that privacy is the core value in the digital age.

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Great background, friends

Mary | Satoshi Club:
And your analytic skills led you to Panther Protocol

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
And yes this idea is just amazing

Give us a brief introduction to the project. What is the essence of Panther Protocol

Mary | Satoshi Club:
You’re a true cryptolover

privacy is really important here!

Constantinos:
Haha true!

Constantinos:
So Panther is an end-to-end privacy protocol connecting blockchains to restore privacy in Web3 and DeFi while providing financial institutions a clear path to compliantly participate in digital asset markets.

Panther provides DeFi users with fully collateralized privacy-enhancing digital assets, leveraging crypto-economic incentives and zkSNARKs technology. Users can mint zero-knowledge zAssets by depositing digital assets from any blockchain into Panther vaults. zAssets flow across blockchains via a privacy first interchain DEX and a private metastrate. Panther envisions that zAssets will become an ever-expanding asset class for users who want their transactions and strategies the way they should always have been: private.

Constantinos:
By the way we have just announced our new website, please check it out and tell us what you think!

https://www.pantherprotocol.io/

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
These are innovative revolutionary ideas!

Mary | Satoshi Club:
It sounds so cool! When you’re telling any protocol does it mean really any?

Constantinos:
Well, deploying on a new protocol is expensive and time-consuming but technically yes, any protocol

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Unbelievable! Hope one day it will be easily possible!

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
We would like to know more about your team. Who is on the project team core?

@andrewzap @Consanto

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
So, perhaps, what’s most important about our team is that most of us have been in the blockchain world for years and are indeed seasoned experts. Just as an example:
Oliver (CEO) co-founded a couple of successful crypto companies and invented CBDC.
Anish (CTO) was reviewing the Ethereum whitepaper early on as well as served as the advisor for Ripple.
Ramadan (COO) worked in BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investment companies.
I would say the best way to find out about our team would be to check out our newly updated website

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Great dream team

Mary | Satoshi Club:
I like your website, btw

Thank you so much, guys, for your intro!

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Thanks for great introduction, we have several questions which were selected for the 1st part. Ready to start?

Constantinos:
Let’s go!

Q1 from Telegram user @Ngoctu21
Panther Protocol provides DeFi users with fully collateralized, interactive privacy, augments digital assets, leverages zkSNARK technology, and provides a new price discovery mechanism for privacy. I found that Panther Protocol uses both zero-knowledge proof and game theory as a mechanism to provide privacy. Can you tell us more about this? How can these mechanisms help you achieve your privacy goals in your platform? What are the benefits of using both?

Constantinos:
zkSNARKs stands for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge.

It’s a form of Zero-Knowledge cryptography. It allows you to prove something, like your age, without revealing any other information such as your name, date of birth or nationality. Panther uses zkSNARKs to enable its users to produce zkAttestations that can submit to Service providers. Minimum disclosure is the result. It is still a small privacy leak, but it is sufficient and measured and allows you to establish that trust relationship with your counterparty.

Now, game theory is used in Panther to optimize the anonymity set in our Shielded Pools and allow for price discovery for privacy.

Privacy at a fair price — This is the final piece of the jigsaw; the setting of a price. Privacy and trust are currently reserved for the uber-rich in our world. With the Panther Protocol governance mechanisms, privacy is priced by the transaction, not by the transactor where both powerful and puny can avail of the same protections.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
So, can you explain for users who are not so familiar with tech side what they will be able to do using Panther Protocol without revealing their privacy?

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
So, on a very high level and from the user perspective, our MVP will consist of, say, a dark pool that consists of all zAssets. You should be able to deposit your assets in the pool and make them private. You should be able to send them inside of the Panther ecosystem and then withdraw them.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Wow, that’s attractive

when do you plan to launch?

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
The work is in progress, and we don’t have an ETA yet. I would say we’re talking about weeks, so hopefully before the end of the year.

Constantinos:
We don’t have a specific date yet but sometime after the public sale

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
We’ll be sharing all the updates on the go.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Sure! We will follow your updates!

Thank you for your answers! Ready to proceed?

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Yes, we will be grateful if you share with us

Constantinos:
Sure ;p

Q2 from Telegram user @Pavel_Jarosh
Panther sets privacy as one of the main pillars of DeFi and therefore its vision throughout the project. In the crypto world, neither FinCen nor any other security networks have enough rights to distinguish privacy from financial crimes as these definitions are crossed nowadays. Please explain how do you plan to monitor and respect a fundamental right of privacy of everyone from the attempts to use this privacy for money laundering for ex.? Thank you!

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
The answer is simple: Selective and Zero-Knowledge disclosures

DeFi users and institutional traders can voluntarily make selective disclosures of transactional data to a counterparty, directly or via trust providers. Forward-thinking service providers and regulators may accept zero-knowledge disclosures (zkAttestations), which prove to the verifier that the user is adhering to a certain ruleset, without providing any underlying data.

This has the potential to revolutionize the compliance and KYC industries, solving the data siloing and data breach problems that plague the world and contribute to the erosion of user privacy.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
So, users won’t have any problems with exchanges or regulations using your protocol?

Constantinos:
Also, you can check out this article which goes into more detail https://blog.pantherprotocol.io/can-privacy-and-compliance-co-exist-4f456281d7c2

Exactly.

They will be able to provide the necessary data to anyone they want. It’s just not gonna by the public by default as it is now.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
This solves all problems!

Thank you for your answers! Ready to go to the next question?

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Thanks for your detailed answers

Constantinos:
Our pleasure.

Q3 from Telegram user @chinyere2020
“Users are able to mint zero-knowledge zAssets by depositing digital assets from any blockchain into Panther vaults and using these zAssets across a full range of DeFi applications.” Can you list some examples of the DeFi applications where zAssets can be used? Can users get these zAssets from farms/pools or any other source?

Constantinos:
Sure this is a great question! So by using zAssets in the Panther wallet all necessary privacy steps occur automatically and all the necessary conversions happen in order for the user to use most of DeFi apps anonymously.
You can refer to our article explaining zAssets and specifically to the user journey close to the bottom: https://blog.pantherprotocol.io/minting-and-burning-zassets-a-semi-technical-deep-dive-18dea602a859?source=collection_home—4——1———————–

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Very useful article! It’s easy to read!

Will you charge any fee for minting?

Constantinos:
There will be a small fee associate with minting but these are fine-tuning details that will be released closer to the launch

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Btw how do you achieve compatibility between chains?

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Sure

Constantinos:
So there will be privacy Shielded Pools across different chains, in the same way, users transfer assets from chain to chain using bridges, Panther will deploy its own bridges to cater for the privacy requirements as well.

Mary | Satoshi Club:

Thank you for your answers! Ready to jump to the next question?

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Thanks for your great answers

Q4 from Telegram User @DK177
Could you please explain deeply about your multi-asset smart contract protocol? According to what you have already published on the website and the whitepaper, we are allowed to deposit digital assets into your vaults and mint zAssets. What are the accepted digital assets for your vaults? Do we get rewards from the same zAsset? For instance, do we need to deposit $ETH to get $zETH? By the way, what is the advantage of minting zAssets? Can we convert them into normal digital assets on your platform or anywhere else? Further, please explain the use cases of these zero-knowledge assets. Using your vaults, can’t we get returns such as staking rewards from the same digital asset we deposit, for example, $ETH rewards (instead of $zETH) for $ETH deposits?

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Partially covered

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
Panther Protocol proposes a new asset class called zero-knowledge assets (zAssets), which are fully collateralized, privacy-enhancing assets that are interoperable and composable with DeFi infrastructure.

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
They are derivatives of other typically non-private cryptoassets (e.g. Ethereum ERC-20 tokens and similar). A zAsset is pegged 1:1 to the underlying cryptoasset which is locked as collateral in Panther Vaults — autonomous, zero-knowledge, self-custodial smart contracts which act as decentralized custodians for collateral of zAssets. Collateral may be partially or fully redeemed by burning some or all of the minted zAsset.

As for which assets and the specific rewards from privacy staking you’d have to wait for the official announcements coming in a few weeks just before the launch of our MVP on Polygon.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
So, you first will launch on Polygon?

Constantinos:
Exactly ;p

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Why did you choose it?

Actually, it’s our next question).

Mary | Satoshi Club:
@GoldRocket27

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:

Constantinos:
We chose Polygon because over the years it has demonstrated its incredible technical capabilities, it has very low fees which will allow the proper mixing of zAssets, and of course there is a thriving DeFi ecosystem being developed there.

Q5 from Telegram User @Highpee
In few weeks, public sale will commence. Can you share the procedure of how your public sale will be conducted? What will users need to be part of this event? In addition, you said after the public sale, you will release your MVP first on polygon and later on Ethereum. What are the scope of your MVP and why are you launching it first on polygon? How can users join and apply to be a beta tester in order to have a first-hand feeling of your fully collaterised private Inter-Chain solutions?

Mary | Satoshi Club:
I think it’s time to talk about beta testing

Constantinos:
Currently, we are super focused on the Public Sale of our token $ZKP in a few weeks and subsequently the release of our MVP on Polygon and later on Ethereum. If you are interested to participate in our Public sale please fill out the interest form https://share.hsforms.com/1NEKpcC84SFmK0fpd4sFoZQ8mifv

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Any benefits for early adopters?

Constantinos:
Thankfully we have released a very detailed article regarding the scope of the MVP! You can check it out here: https://blog.pantherprotocol.io/coming-soon-panther-protocols-mvp-launch-on-polygon-6d9390e10028

We are planning to have a beta testing period where we will allow users to check out the MVP of the testnet. Unfortunately, I don’t have more information about this as the tech team is currently planning. Stay tuned for the official release by following us on our social media!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZPPanther
Telegram: https://t.me/pantherprotocol
Medium: https://blog.pantherprotocol.io/
Discord: https://discord.gg/dyFDGg8Zt9

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Hm, it’s very exciting

how many people already filled it

? I feel a lot

Constantinos:

Andrew Zapotochnyi:
@madamlobster Hey Mary, I’m having another call now and I’m going to have to go now. Consta will take it from here

Constantinos:
The response from the community was overwhelming!

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Sure! It was a pleasure to have you here

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Have a great day

Mary | Satoshi Club:
I can only imagine

Thank you for your answers! What about 6th and last question from this part?

Constantinos:
Lets go ;p

Q6 from Telegram User @yellowchamp
Panther Protocol just recently announced a partnership with NEAR Protocol in which you received a grant from NEAR to explore the development of open-source privacy infrastructure. So, can you explain more about this open-source privacy infrastructure that you are going to explore within Near Protocol network? How would be this open-source privacy infrastructure will bring a great impact on your network? How it will bring a good contribution to Panther Protocol network? Can you describe the win-win benefits of your collaboration with Near Protocol and how it will bring a good contribution to users and investors of your platform? Thank you.

Constantinos:
Absolutely! We are truly excited to be working with NEAR protocol and thankful for the grant we have received.

Panther will use the grant to do the required research and hire a tech team with the intention to launch Panthers Privacy solution on NEAR. This includes the deployment of Panther’s privacy solutions on NEAR’s EVM, Aurora.

You can check out the details of the partnership here: https://blog.pantherprotocol.io/panther-and-near-protocol-announce-partnership-to-develop-privacy-preserving-tech-in-the-near-7735205a1fae

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Which other partnerships do you currently have?

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Big milestone

Constantinos:

• Polygon
• Flare
• NEAR
• Elrond
• StackOS
• Bumper
• Firo

And others ;p

Many more to come btw.

Mary | Satoshi Club:
Only the best from the industry, congratulations

Gold Rocket | Satoshi Club:
Sounds amazing

Constantinos:
Thank you

Part 2 — live questions from the Telegram community

Q1 from Telegram user @highpee
How long will it take for you to become a DAO in order for a community to be able to contribute and assist in directing the affairs of this project? How is the quadratic voting mechanism that you will use allow community preferences to be fully expressed? What range of actions, proposals, and implementation will be made available to DAO when it eventually takes off?

Constantinos:
Panther’s governance mechanism is aimed at decentralization to the fullest degree over the course of the evolution of the protocol. The aim is to implement mechanisms such as quadratic voting, so that community preferences are fully expressed. The roadmap of the protocol includes staged deployment which allows transitioning of the governance from an initial centralized model to a fully decentralized one, a common approach in this industry. The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) would ultimately have the ability to develop and accept improvement proposals with the #ZKP token. Voting proposals shall implement mechanisms that reduce the chances of governance capture.

The DAO will be instituted using quadratic voting, a process whereby collective decision-making procedure involves individuals allocating votes to express the degree of their preferences, rather than just the direction of their preferences. By doing so, quadratic voting helps enable users to address issues of voting paradox and majority rule.

Q2 from Telegram user @sophiejohnson1
How will I convert my digital assets deposited in Panther Vaults into zero-knowledge zVaults? What advantage will I get?

Constantinos:
Only by having zAssets you can enjoy the privacy benefits that Panther provides. Additionally, by having your zAssets in a shielded pool, you are receiving staking rewards in $ZKP, panthers token.

Q3 from Telegram user @JaviSuBs
Panther Protocol, can I provide liquidity in the early stages, what is the recommendation to do it? How do we participate in the Panther network to receive rewards? How are privacy miners rewarded within the protocol? What is the main function of Panther Vaults and how secure and private is its system?

Constantinos:
Absolutely! The process is called privacy staking. Basically, you will have to mint zAssets and then add them to one of the shielded pools. The longer they stay there the more rewards you are getting. It’s kinda like liquidity mining but without the risk of impermanent loss.

Q4 from Telegram user @Einsteinyl
Panther Protocol is best. Can you mention when will Panther release token for Panther project?

Constantinos:
As mentioned earlier we are gearing up for the public sale. As soon as the public sale is done, TGE will happen, we will distribute the tokens and proceed to list on CEXs and DEXs.

Q5 from Telegram user @csgonub
Probably now everyone is really sure that NFT technology is a great tech for the defi and make promises so I wonder as Panther Protocol do you plan to create your marketplace with special NFTs?

Constantinos:
Our partnership with StackOS and the deployment of Panther’s privacy solution on StackOS will give us some nice synergies regarding NFTs. Our goal is to provide NFTs with privacy too ;p

Q6 from Telegram user @crushDISHA1
How strong is your team? Many projects start with a good impression and are later abandoned the project. What makes your project various from others?

Constantinos:
To bring to market the next generation of decentralized products with built-in user privacy controls, Panther brings to the table a team of hands-on, world-class technical, product, and commercial experts that hail from the intersection of privacy-enhancing technologies, blockchain, and finance.

The Panther team consists of over 25 experts from the fields of privacy, security, zero-knowledge proofs, blockchain, DeFi, token economics, software engineering, finance, and ecosystem development.

The technical leadership team collectively has spearheaded high-profile initiatives across 55+ blockchain projects.

Panther’s commercial and operations team members worked at BlackRock, P&G, Vimeo, Siemens, Cambridge Analytica, ConsenSys, Dell, NATO HQ, HSBC, and Lloyds Bank.

Q7 from Telegram user @smelekin
Most of the projects are only have English communities right now but we all know the world is bigger than English so do you have any local communities for people who don’t speak English?

Constantinos:
We have a vibrant Vietnamese community in telegram and our content is being translated into many other languages at times. In the future we plan to launch more non-english speaking communities. Maye you can help ;p

Q8 from Telegram user @winnernai
Do you have Whitepaper if yes, please share it with me as secondly do you have plans for pre-sale? Now, where can we Join it?

Constantinos:
Absolutely, you can check our whitepaper here https://docsend.com/view/tbz99g285hbnn8ic and also our Blog here https://blog.pantherprotocol.io/

Q9 from Telegram user @MinxOxyde
For beginner or non-technical technology background users, is there any easy step to Minting our digital asset into Phanter protocol Vaults?, or do we need to write some source code, or whatever it is to mint our digital asset into the Vaults?

Constantinos:
The process is going to be very easy and simple. We are designing the UX so that everyone can use Panther.

Q10 from Telegram user @mimkhal
“Panther Protocol provides DeFi users with interoperable, fully collateralized privacy-enhancing digital assets, leveraging zkSNARK technology and offering a novel price discovery mechanism for privacy?

Constantinos:
Security is our top priority. Users of Panther will be using the most secure privacy protocol for their assets.

Panther development is guided by in-house security expertise. Our co-founder and CTO Anish has 20+ years in security and cryptography, is an early advisor to Ripple, reviewed the Ethereum orange paper. Our team has over 40 years of cumulative expertise in security, and have worked on securing some well-known protocols in this space.

The smart contract stack will be fully audited by industry-recognized security researchers prior to launch.

Part 3 — Quiz Results

In the final part, we tested your knowledge in terms of Panther Protocol. They’ve prepared 4 questions for this part. The total reward pool for the quiz was 300$.
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