Panther Protocol partners with Songbird — Flare’s Canary network — to accelerate privacy adoption in DeFi

Today, Panther Protocol has announced that its partnership with Flare will be expanded into Flare’s Canary network, Songbird. Flare is the world’s first Turing-complete FBA (Federated Byzantine Agreement) network, and Panther is building the interoperable privacy layer decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web 3.0, aiming to make privacy a standard, not an afterthought.

Flare started its mission to “Unlock the Value” inherent in the 65% of blockchains that do not have native smart contracts by bringing, for the first time, true trustless usage of those tokens with scalable smart contracts and integrating Ethereum’s Virtual Machine in a scalable way. 

Blockchain interoperability is, without a doubt, a marked trend in our industry, and Flare is taking a unique approach by incorporating bigger blockchains that need smart contracting and interoperability capabilities. 

Flare and Songbird started this mission with Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Stellar (XLM) and Algorand (ALGO). Both parties have stated that they aim to bring new capabilities and privacy features to these projects with this collaboration.

About the partnership

Both Flare’s and Panther’s teams shared their enthusiasm about the many areas of opportunity between Panther and Songbird. Aside from defining several ways for Flare’s Songbird users to benefit from privacy features and Panther’s to receive support both from the Flare mainnet and its Canary network, the partnership may propel Panther towards its milestones. The partnership agreement also serves to support the development of further projects and privacy features by Panther on Songbird.

Building a privacy ecosystem

Songbird will integrate Panther’s shielded pools into its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to enable on-chain privacy for its users. Panther will deploy its privacy-preserving infrastructure on Songbird for code testing.

Thanks to these efforts, Panther users will be able to benefit from private transactions over Songbird. This is expected to increase the user base and TVL potential of Panther’s shielded pools. 

Songbird users will be included in Panther’s staking and governance. They’ll also be able to benefit from private DeFi within the network, access selective disclosures for retail users and institutions, and enjoy early access to Panther’s KYC/AML zero-knowledge solution on Songbird’s institutional side. 

Upon finalizing the agreement, co-founder and CEO Oliver Gale said: “From the first day, there was clear alignment between the founders of Panther and Flare network around the need for privacy, compliance, security and scalability in blockchain ecosystems, and in particular, those relating to institutional DeFi. In Flare and Songbird, we see great ecosystem partners, innovative technology and clear action-oriented plans for mass adoption.”

Hugo Philion, co-founder and CEO at Flare and Songbird added “Songbird has launched to be a testbed for Flare and the most ground-breaking decentralized technologies. So we are thrilled that Panther are leveraging their zkSNARK cryptography and state-of-the-art asset mixing technologies to deliver Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) enabled privacy solutions that DeFi requires to make a giant leap forward. Stablecoins, utility tokens and NFTs can now be owned and traded with privacy while remaining compliant, giving sovereignty back to the user.”

About Songbird

Songbird is the Canary network for Flare, which is an operational blockchain with a defined token supply, similar to Polkadot’s Kusama network. Innovations and new DApp launches will happen first on Songbird and can then be rolled out on Flare after testing. This means that Songbird will often have more advanced features than Flare. Post Flare launch, Songbird is intended to be a long-term network for testing governance-led changes to Flare but can take its path as set by its own token holder mediated governance. Songbird has demonstrated phenomenal growth, having only existed for eight weeks, it has already processed over 2.3 million blocks and registered over 222 thousand addresses.

About Panther Protocol

Panther is an end-to-end privacy protocol connecting blockchains to restore privacy in Web 3.0 and DeFi while providing financial institutions with a clear path to competently 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.