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THORChain x Zano Podcast #242 ft. Mr_Kwibs, KentonC137 & patriotsounds | October 10, 2026 | Watch the full episode on YouTube

By Raynalytics

TL;DRZano said it is restoring gateway addresses only after an additional independent audit, following an exploit that led the project to roll back to the Hard Fork 6 point and reimburse affected users.Confidential Assets are Zano’s attempt to make amounts, addresses, and asset types private by default. $fUSD is one live example, but it is currently a third-party stablecoin with a centralized mint-and-burn point.Gateway addresses are the technical bridge between Zano’s private UTXO model and the public balance checks a future THORChain integration would need. They are not active for THORChain today.A THORChain-to-Zano swap would be publicly visible on THORChain. Privacy begins only after funds leave THORChain and move within Zano.Zano’s longer roadmap includes the Zano Execution Layer and Zenith, but the guests put the recovery audit and gateway-address return ahead of any integration timeline.IntroductionThe conversation was not a launch announcement. It was a progress report on a privacy chain that is repairing a serious failure while keeping its interoperability plans intact. Zano’s team joined Kenton and Denny to explain the exploit, the recovery approach, why $fUSD matters to the project’s Confidential Assets thesis, and why gateway addresses are the prerequisite for a future THORChain route.

The key distinction throughout the episode was status. Zano’s recovery chain is operating, reimbursements were described as nearly complete, and gateway-address code has been fixed. But the team still wants an outside audit before reactivating that capability. A Zano pool on THORChain, and any later consideration of $fUSD, remain dependent on that work.

1. Recovery Comes Before IntegrationZano’s co-founder described an exploit in its gateway-address implementation, introduced after Hard Fork 6. The team said a missing cryptographic validation let attackers exploit the system first in August and then again in September. The issue was not in the chain’s core private-transaction design, but in the gateway layer that connects a private chain to systems needing visible balances.

The response was a recovery chain beginning again from the Hard Fork 6 point, rather than accepting an inflated supply. The team said it has been reimbursing affected users with support from the development fund, personal funds, and voluntary community contributions. It also said most exchanges and services had completed the recovery process by the time of the recording.

Zano has also opened donations to its development fund. Anyone wishing to contribute can send $ZANO or $fUSD using the options in that official update.

"We are making everyone whole." (Quinten)That recovery does not mean the gateway system is being rushed back. The guests said the code is fixed, but they want a further audit from a trusted external party before setting a new activation date. Their estimate was at least two to three months for the activation process once the audit and release path begin. That was an estimate, not a delivery promise.

The sequencing matters for THORChain. Gateway addresses are the feature Zano designed to make external integrations workable. Until they return, the chain-client work cannot move from an architectural discussion to a live pool.

2. Confidential Assets Put $fUSD Inside Zano’s Privacy ModelZano positions itself as a privacy-by-default layer 1. Its core claim is broader than private balances: normal transfers conceal the amount, receiver, and asset type. That same model extends to Confidential Assets, which let builders issue assets on Zano without exposing those properties on-chain.

$fUSD, or Freedom Dollar, is the example discussed most directly. It is a third-party stablecoin built on Zano, not an asset issued by the Zano team. Quinten said it was overcollateralized with $ZANO, with roughly 6.8 million $fUSD in circulation and close to $8 million of $ZANO reserves at the time of the conversation.

The guests were clear about the trade-off in its current form. The asset is private, but minting and burning are still controlled from one wallet. The planned Zano Execution Layer could eventually support programmable lending, borrowing, and a more decentralized collateral-and-minting model. Those are aspirations for future infrastructure, not features live on the private base layer today.

"The answer is like double no." (Zano co-founder, on a blacklist function)The point was not that every application built on Zano is automatically decentralized. It was that the base chain does not provide a selective freeze or blacklist mechanism for Confidential Asset transfers. That distinction became central after the hosts discussed the temporary freezing of some TRON $USDT vaults on THORChain.

3. Gateway Addresses Are the Bridge to THORChainPrivate chains are difficult to integrate because an external protocol still needs to verify what it controls. THORChain vaults continuously check balances for solvency. Zano’s regular UTXO model deliberately hides those details, so the team designed gateway addresses as a special, more transparent account-based entry point for bridges, exchanges, and decentralized systems.

For a potential Zano chain client, that means a THORChain vault could see and verify the balance in its gateway address while ordinary Zano transfers retain the chain’s privacy properties. The guests also described a way to rotate the gateway owner key without moving all assets to a newly created address, which better matches THORChain’s recurring vault churn.

StarSquid is continuing the chain-client work once gateway addresses are restored. The teams said the remaining adjustment is compatible with THORChain’s model, but it still requires implementation and testing. No mainnet date was given.

"If you swap to Zano on THORChain, you have not achieved privacy." (Denny)That is an important boundary for readers. A THORChain swap remains public like every other THORChain swap. A user seeking Zano’s privacy properties would need to take a separate action after receiving Zano, within the Zano network itself. The prospective integration would add permissionless access to the asset, not turn THORChain into a mixer.

4. The Roadmap Separates Recovery, Speed, and ProgrammabilityThe recovery work comes first, but Zano also outlined two longer-term technical tracks. Zenith is the planned move from the current hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake model to a pure proof-of-stake consensus system built on Zarcanum. The guests said they are targeting roughly 15 to 20 second blocks and five to 10 confirmations, which could reduce the current roughly 10-minute re-spend wait to about one minute or a little more.

"You can be private and fast." (Quinten)The second track is the Zano Execution Layer, or ZEL. It is intended as a separate EVM-compatible environment, linked to Zano through a threshold-signature bridge. The private base layer would remain the home for confidential transfers and assets, while programmable applications such as lending and collateralized stablecoin logic could live in the execution layer.

Neither track changes the immediate priority. Gateway addresses must return after audit before a Zano-to-THORChain integration can proceed, and the guests said the execution-layer work depends on those addresses too. The roadmap is directionally clear, but its stages are not interchangeable with a launch date.

5. Why Zano Sees THORChain as a Long-Term Access RouteThe practical case for a future Zano pool was access. Quinten said Zano had lost some routes as centralized providers changed policies and several exchanges ceased operations. The point was not a recommendation to bypass any platform’s rules. It was that access dependent on a small number of centralized services can disappear when their policies or operations change.

The team sees a permissionless THORChain pool as a more durable route, particularly because Zano is already supported by wallets such as Edge Wallet and Unstoppable Wallet. If the chain client and pool are eventually live, those wallet integrations could potentially offer Zano trading through THORChain rather than relying on a single external liquidity source.

The guests said the team and major holders would be willing to bootstrap liquidity, but that is an intention rather than a funded pool announcement. They also described a possible future $fUSD integration as an option for THORChain to consider only after Zano itself is in place.

"THORChain needs you as well." (Denny)The episode’s broader thesis was that permissionless access and private assets are complementary, but they are not the same thing. THORChain can provide an open route to a native asset. Zano can provide privacy once value is on its network. The recovery work and gateway audit are what stand between that thesis and a live integration.

What to WatchWhether Zano completes its independent gateway-address audit and announces a reactivation path without sacrificing the recovery team’s stated caution.Whether StarSquid and the THORChain team can complete, test, and review the chain-client work after gateway addresses return.Whether prospective liquidity providers formalize a Zano pool plan, including sufficient depth for a useful market rather than only a symbolic listing.Whether Zenith and the Zano Execution Layer move from architecture to tested releases, especially for faster confirmations and more decentralized stablecoin logic.Whether $fUSD becomes a candidate for further interoperability only after the underlying Zano route is operating reliably.More THORChain data, check out raynalytics.net

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Zano has announced that the privacy-focused L1 chain is in a ‘stable’ condition following a recent hotfix and rollback. 

In an X post, the team said it will recover affected balances in full, but it may take a little longer as exchanges verify ZANO transactions. 

ZANO supply and emission will remain unchanged. Funding comes from the developer fund, team members’ personal funds, and contributors who have committed support.

Source: X On the 28th of September, the blockchain was rolled back by a month to resolve an inflation vulnerability that let hackers mint an unspecified amount of ZANO and fUSD. 

The Freedom Dollar team behind fUSD said that a preliminary investigation showed “several million dollars” worth of assets were exchanged for counterfeit fUSD. 

According to the Zano team, the rollback and hotfix were aimed at restoring the chain and maintaining a capped ZANO supply. 

As part of the recovery, users will need to get updated mobile wallets. For third-party platforms and payment services, they can access the new network by updating their nodes. 

These services will audit a month of transactions before reopening withdrawals and deposits. As such, the full recovery may take a little while to complete. 

This (activity verification) takes time, and doing it carefully is what prevents balances from being credited to the wrong people or twice.

Zano vs. Zcash: Are private pools becoming a risk? Interestingly, the Zano exploit took about a month to notice after its Hard Fork 6 went live in late August. It’s the upgrade that introduced the inflation bug that was exploited by hackers. 

This is slightly similar to Zcash’s Orchard pool inflation bug in May. It took four years to be found, and this was the second incident for Zcash. Another counterfeiting flaw was found in 2018. And the private nature of these shielded pools initially made it challenging to flag these flaws in time.

To keep the privacy feature and still minimize these flaws, Zcash introduced turnstile accounting, allowing assets to be tracked and counted between protocol upgrades. 

Zano’s aggressive network rollback is just another way privacy-focused protocols are adopting to respond to hacks and counterfeit flaws. 

Still, it’s unclear if these remedies will restore the confidence of privacy-leaning investors.

In the past week, ZANO’s price declined by 36% to $5.5, fueled by the inflation bug. This level has been a key support in 2026, but it’s unclear whether bulls will increase exposure amid the network recovery plan. 

Source: ZANO/USDT, TradingView  Final Summary Zano project team promises full balance recovery as exchanges begin transaction audit. ZANO’s price dumped 36%, partly fueled by the inflation bug.

A bug that lets a blockchain silently mint extra coins is, in the hierarchy of crypto emergencies, about as serious as it gets. Zano, a privacy-focused layer-1 blockchain, found itself confronting exactly that problem on September 25, 2026, when the team publicly identified an inflation bug and ordered an immediate, network-wide halt to all economic activity.

The project plans to roll back its blockchain by roughly 24 hours to excise the damage, and has committed to making affected users whole in the process.

What happened and why it matters The bug is tied to Gateway Addresses, a feature introduced in Zano’s Hard Fork 6, which activated on mainnet at block 3,833,000 around August 26, 2026. Gateway Addresses were designed to smooth out service integrations while preserving the privacy guarantees Zano is built around. Somewhere in that new code, a flaw opened the door to unauthorized asset creation.

For a project whose entire economic model rests on scarcity, the stakes are high. Zano operates on a fixed emission schedule with a 1 ZANO block reward, and every transaction fee is burned rather than paid to miners, a design meant to make the supply deflationary over time. An inflation bug cuts directly against that architecture, undermining the foundational promise the project makes to its holders.

The team has instructed users to stop all economic activity on both the primary Zano chain and its Confidential Assets layer until the rollback is complete. The specific block height at which the chain will be rewound has not been disclosed publicly, nor has a detailed breakdown of how many unauthorized coins were created or how compensation will be structured.

Rollbacks, finality, and the uncomfortable questions they raise A 24-hour blockchain rollback is not a light decision. It invalidates the concept of transaction finality for every trade, transfer, or contract settled during that window. Anyone who received funds, completed a sale, or moved assets during the affected period now exists in a kind of temporal limbo, waiting to see what the ledger looks like once the team rewinds and rebuilds.

For Zano, the answer is the core development team, which retains enough coordination power to execute a move like this. The commitment to reimburse affected users is a meaningful gesture and, if executed transparently, could limit the reputational fallout. The compensation process itself, though, remains unspecified, which leaves users with little to do right now except wait.

Privacy coins under the microscope Zano’s crisis lands at a delicate moment for the privacy coin sector. Earlier in 2026, Zcash dealt with its own high-profile operational incident, and the cumulative effect of these episodes is a market that is increasingly skeptical about the maturity of privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure.

Privacy coins occupy an already uncomfortable regulatory position in many jurisdictions. Several exchanges have delisted assets like Monero and Zcash under pressure from regulators who view transaction obfuscation as a compliance liability.

For Zano specifically, supply integrity is not just a technical feature, it is the value proposition. A network that burns fees to create deflation needs users to believe that the emission schedule is actually being followed. A bug that compromises that belief, even temporarily, does lasting damage to the narrative.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

Zano, a privacy-centric blockchain that has been quietly building since 2019, just pulled the curtain back on Zenith, a new consensus protocol that will move the entire network from its hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-stake setup to a pure proof-of-stake model.

The announcement, made on July 16, positions Zenith as the most significant architectural change in Zano’s history. A full network transition is targeted for 2027, with no specific activation date locked in yet. In the meantime, the project has a more immediate milestone on the calendar: Hard Fork 6, expected to activate around August 25-27, which will introduce new gateway addresses to the ecosystem.

What Zenith actually changes Zenith cuts target block time from 60 seconds down to approximately 15 seconds. Recommended confirmations drop from 10 to just 4-6, which means typical confirmation times land somewhere in the 60- to 90-second range.

First, all transaction fees will be burned. Not partially redistributed to validators, not sent to a treasury. Burned. Every fee paid on every transaction gets permanently removed from the circulating supply.

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Second, the protocol is moving to a lower block reward emission schedule. Validators will still earn rewards for producing blocks, but those rewards will be smaller than what miners and stakers received under the hybrid model.

Third, Zenith introduces what the team calls “ephemeral blocks” to optimize chain size and efficiency, designed to prevent the blockchain from bloating as transaction volume increases.

Privacy stays private Zano solved the challenge of private staking with Zarcanum, a protocol the team developed that enables fully private staking. Stake amounts remain hidden, and block production is non-linkable, meaning observers cannot connect a specific validator to a specific block. Zenith builds directly on top of this foundation, so the transition to pure PoS does not compromise any of the privacy guarantees that already exist.

The project has been working on this in collaboration with Common Prefix, a blockchain research and development firm.

The broader context for privacy chains Zano’s mainnet launched in 2019 with a hybrid consensus model that let users both mine and stake. The shift to pure PoS simplifies that architecture, removing two consensus mechanisms, two potential attack vectors, more complicated upgrade paths, and higher overhead for node operators.

What this means for investors The combination of burned transaction fees and reduced block rewards creates a dual supply reduction mechanism. Moving entirely off proof-of-work also eliminates the energy-intensive mining component.

The Hard Fork 6 activation in late August will serve as an immediate proving ground for the team’s ability to execute network upgrades on schedule, with gateway addresses being introduced as the primary change in that fork.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.