@Alex, @matteo is the true source of info here, but I have been hanging around for a few months so I will attempt to answer your question.
I believe the goal is to release Panda as a standalone editor on both MacOS and iOS. AND, eventually the Panda editor functionality will make its way into Bear, while the other features of Bear will remain the same (largely).
As for encryption, with Panda since it’s just utilizing a filesystem, you could always create an encrypted disk image and store all of your files in that image. This disk image could be saved anywhere. Though this option may only be practical using MacOS.
I for one am extremely excited and am slightly impatient for the Panda editor functionality to make its way into Bear. But being a developer myself I know that solid development takes time and is not worth rushing. I love the back-end design of Bear, and it’s a huge part of why I choose to use it instead of Notion or Roam (local vs. cloud). Table support is a feature I’ve been wanting for a long time, and Panda already executes the feature extremely well.
As for Bear-specific functionality, I’m just waiting for backlinks 
The backend seems to easily support it … it seems to be more of a matter of getting the UI design right, which is extremely important. I’m really excited about this and am curious to see if Bear grabs a bunch of users from Notion and Roam if/when this happens.