Panther Protocol

Panther Protocol is a decentralized finance (DeFi) solution established in 2021 by co-founders Oliver Gale and Dr. Anish Mohammed to address on-chain data privacy. The company, legally Panther Ventures Limited, is based in the United Kingdom and was incorporated on April 5, 2021. The project has secured significant funding, raising a total of $32 million through various private and public token sales, including an $8 million Series A round in June 2021 and a $22 million public sale in November 2021 that closed in 90 minutes.

The co-founders bring a wealth of relevant experience. Oliver Gale, the CEO, is a serial entrepreneur and an early advocate for cryptocurrency, having co-founded the Caribbean's first blockchain company in 2013 and pioneered a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Dr. Anish Mohammed, the CTO, is a multi-disciplinary expert with over two decades of experience in cryptography, security, and blockchain protocol design, having researched at Microsoft Research and advised projects like Ripple and Ethereum. Their combined expertise addresses the protocol's core challenge: reconciling privacy with regulatory compliance in the DeFi space.

Panther Protocol operates as an end-to-end privacy layer for DeFi and Web3, designed to be interoperable across multiple public blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, and NEAR. It caters to both retail and institutional clients who require confidentiality for their on-chain activities. The core of the business revolves around leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology, specifically zk-SNARKs, to allow users to conduct transactions without exposing their financial data. The protocol allows users to deposit digital assets (e.g., ETH, BTC, USDT) into Panther Vaults and in return mint private, 1:1 collateralized synthetic assets called zAssets (e.g., zETH, zBTC, zUSDT). These zAssets can then be used across the DeFi ecosystem privately, shielding trading strategies and personal financial information from public view.

Revenue generation and protocol utility are built around its native token, ZKP. This ERC-20 token is used for several functions, including staking by users who contribute liquidity to Panther's shielded pools (known as privacy miners) to earn rewards. ZKP also serves as a governance token, allowing holders to vote on proposals through the Panther DAO, which has governed the protocol since its decentralized launch. Furthermore, the protocol includes a mechanism for selective disclosures, allowing users to prove compliance to trusted parties without revealing the underlying transaction data, thereby providing a pathway for regulated institutions to participate in DeFi.

Keywords: Panther Protocol, DeFi privacy, zero-knowledge proofs, Oliver Gale, Anish Mohammed, ZKP token, zAssets, financial privacy, blockchain interoperability, private transactions, compliance compatible DeFi, zk-SNARK, crypto privacy, Web3 privacy, Panther DAO, shielded pools, selective disclosure, decentralized finance, multi-chain privacy, privacy-enhancing technology