AIBC World in Rome has named Avalanche, Litecoin, Dash, TRON and Zano as nominees for Best Layer-1 Blockchain. Here is what to know about the award and the event.
Five blockchains have been nominated for "Best Layer-1 Blockchain" at the AIBC World awards in Rome. The shortlist includes Avalanche (@Avax $AVAX), Litecoin (@Litecoin $LTC), Dash (@Dashpay $DASH), TRON (@trondao $TRX) and Zano (@zano_project). The organiser, @AIBC_World, has not published an explanation of why these five were chosen.
What the award coversAccording to AIBC's awards page, the Layer-1 category . The same page sets out a process that has previously included open nominations and self-nominations, a public and judge vote on a shortlist, and a final awards night.
It is unclear whether the same process was used for the Rome shortlist, as no selection criteria have been published for this round. The five nominees differ widely in design and focus, which makes direct comparison difficult. Avalanche is a smart contract platform, while Litecoin and Dash are payment-focused networks that trace their origins to Bitcoin's early years.
Avalanche has some history with the organiser. in Dubai in February.
About AIBC World in Rome at Fiera Roma.
Industry awards of this kind are typically a marketing and networking exercise as much as a measure of technical merit, so the outcome should not be read as a ranking of network quality. Winners are due to be announced at the ceremony during the November event.
Which of the five do you think deserves the prize?
Sources:
AIBC Eurasia Awards, category descriptions and timelineAIBC, Eurasia Awards 2026 winnersMPost, AIBC World 2026 Rome preview
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
Follow Raynalytics for more Weekly Analytics and Podcast recaps.
The Zano exploit led to over $250 million in fake assets being minted by the attacker. According to a post-mortem report by the project team, the attacker minted 36.89 million ZANO tokens and $18.45 million fUSD, the Freedom Dollar stablecoin.
During late August and September, the period when the hack happened and the team noticed the exploit, ZANO’s price averaged between $6.50 and $7.50. Assuming an average price of $7.00, the 38.6 million ZANO tokens and $18.4 million fUSD translated to a total of about $250 million in fake assets.
Earlier in their preliminary investigation, the Freedom Dollar team said that the attacker exchanged “several million dollars” worth of assets for counterfeit fUSD. This has now been verified, as $18.4 million was swapped for fake minted fUSD.
Before the hack, fUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin on the privacy-focused Zano network, had a market supply of $12 million, or 12 million fUSD tokens. With the hacker minting 18.45 million fUSD, the supply increased by 153%, or 2.5x higher than the base circulation.
Similarly, about 15.44 million ZANO were in circulation before the breach. After the 36.89 million fake ZANO tokens were minted, the supply was inflated by 240%.
To address the inflation issue, the team opted to roll back the network by a month.
Zano hack: The mishap, exploit, and recovery First, the Zano network is privacy-focused, similar to Zcash.
To scale adoption and plug in more exchanges and platforms, it had to allow external venues to track the amounts being transferred and spent. That’s what the Gateway Address feature in Hard Fork 6 was supposed to solve. The upgrade went live in late August.
But there was a code error that led to missing verification for Zano transactions. This allowed the attacker to “hide” extra tokens and mix them with the rest of the legit supply.
The private nature of the transfers made it challenging to trace these fake asset transfers, making the rollback a logical solution, according to the team. While a drawback, the team hailed it as a plus.
The major limitation was the traceability of the exploited ZANO and fUSD coins. Once created, they were indistinguishable from any other private ZANO output. That is privacy working as intended. No one, including the Zano team, can accurately determine which outputs are affected.
The rollback has erased the $250 million exploit, with the team assuring the network recovery is stable and ongoing. They plan to explore the Gateway Address again later to facilitate broader integration with exchanges.
But the ZANO token price was still trading close to $5, a key H2 support level, underscoring that investors were still uncertain about the token after the incident.
Source: ZANO/USDT, TradingView Final Summary Zano team confirmed that nearly $250 million worth of fake ZANO and fUSD was minted by the hacker, The network recovery is stable and ongoing, but investor confidence was still low, per the muted ZANO price,
An attacker who exploited a flaw in Zano’s Gateway Address feature minted roughly 36.9 million unauthorized ZANO before the project reversed about a month of blockchain history, according to a post-mortem released by the team.
The disclosure, published Thursday, describes two large minting events.
On August 29, 2026 the attacker created about 18.4 million ZANO in a single transaction.
The same method was used again on September 25 to produce another 18.4 million ZANO.
The attacker also generated an enormous volume of Freedom Dollar (fUSD), on the order of 1.8 quadrillion tokens, through the same vulnerability.
A portion of the unauthorized assets entered the wider Zano ecosystem.Gateway Addresses were introduced with Hard Fork 6 to make integration easier for exchanges, bridges, and payment services.
The feature lets those operators track funds through an account-style balance rather than reconstructing activity from individual outputs.
The bug allowed new supply to be created without authorization.
The team said the resulting coins behaved like ordinary ZANO: they appeared as normal outputs and could be spent in the usual way.
Because the unauthorized units could not be reliably separated from legitimate ones, selective removal was not practical.
The sequence began the day before the first mint.
On August 28 the attacker registered a Gateway Address and paid the required 100 ZANO registration fee, worth about $553 at the time of the report.
The address was then used to test a fabricated asset before the larger mint the following day.
The initial 18.4 million ZANO creation went unnoticed for nearly a month. Internal review flagged the activity only after the second mint.
Zano said AI-assisted testing, internal audits, and its bug-bounty program had not caught the defect before it was exploited.
That timeline shaped the recovery decision.
The chain was restarted from block 3,833,000, the last block before Hard Fork 6, which effectively erased roughly a month of history and disabled Gateway Addresses pending further review.
Legitimate transactions recorded in that window were invalidated along with the unauthorized supply.
https://t.co/DMZqzcTyL1
— Zano (@zano_project) October 1, 2026
Payments already settled on other networks could not be reversed by the rollback.
Project representatives have acknowledged that reversing chain history damages confidence, while arguing that leaving the extra supply in circulation would have diluted holders and undermined the fixed-supply premise of the asset.
Quinten van Welzen, Zano’s head of marketing and growth, told news media outlets that only a small fraction of the minted coins reached the open market, constrained by available exchange liquidity.
The team has said it is working to restore balances affected by the rollback, drawing on the developer fund, personal contributions from team members, and other committed funds.
Recovery is expected to run mainly through exchanges and payment services: exchanges would replay withdrawals that the rollback reversed, and the project would credit affected deposits.
Wallet spend keys and ordinary transaction privacy were not compromised, according to the investigation, and core consensus rules were unaffected.
The episode underscores how an integration feature intended to lower barriers for services can become a supply-integrity risk when validation fails, and how privacy-oriented designs can complicate cleanup once unauthorized units are indistinguishable from genuine ones.
Update (Oct. 2 at 6:53 am UTC): This article has been updated to include a comment from Zano head of marketing and growth, Quinten van Welzen.
Zano revealed that the attacker who exploited its Gateway Address vulnerability over the last month used it to create 36.9 million Zano (ZANO), along with 1.8 quadrillion Freedom Dollar (fUSD) tokens, before the decision was made to roll the blockchain back by a month.
In a post-mortem published Thursday, Zano said the attacker first exploited the vulnerability on Aug. 29, creating approximately 18.4 million ZANO in a single transaction. The attacker repeated the exploit on Sept. 25, minting another 18.4 million ZANO, before using the same method to create approximately 1.8 quadrillion fUSD.
“These coins functioned as authentic ZANO and could be spent normally,” the team wrote in its post-mortem. Zano spokesperson Quinten van Welzen told Cointelegraph only a small fraction reached the market as it was limited by liquidity available on exchanges.
The figures shed light on why the Zano team called for a rollback of about a month of blockchain history, including legitimate transactions. The team acknowledged that the rollback would hurt trust but argued it was necessary to remove unauthorized supply as it could not be distinguished from legitimate coins.
Attacker paid 100 ZANO exploit entry fee Zano’s post-mortem said the attacker paid 100 ZANO to set up the exploit, worth about $553 at the time of publication.
The attacker registered a Gateway Address on Aug. 28, paid the registration fee, then tested a fabricated asset before the first unauthorized mint the next day.
The first 18.4 million ZANO mint went unnoticed for nearly a month. The team said the unauthorized coins appeared like ordinary outputs, and internal teams flagged the activity after the second mint.
Zano said AI-assisted testing, internal audits and bug bounties failed to pick up the bug.
Meanwhile, Zano said Wednesday it is working to restore affected balances using its developer fund, team members’ personal funds and committed contributions. Recovery will primarily run through exchanges and payment services, with exchanges to replay withdrawals reversed by the rollback and the team credited the affected deposits.
Magazine: China warns foreign spies about crypto, Singapore dominates Asia: Asia Express
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Update (Oct. 2 at 6:53 am UTC): This article has been updated to include a comment from Zano head of marketing and growth, Quinten van Welzen.
Zano revealed that the attacker who exploited its Gateway Address vulnerability over the last month used it to create 36.9 million Zano (ZANO), along with 1.8 quadrillion Freedom Dollar (fUSD) tokens, before the decision was made to roll the blockchain back by a month.
In a post-mortem published Thursday, Zano said the attacker first exploited the vulnerability on Aug. 29, creating approximately 18.4 million ZANO in a single transaction. The attacker repeated the exploit on Sept. 25, minting another 18.4 million ZANO, before using the same method to create approximately 1.8 quadrillion fUSD.
“These coins functioned as authentic ZANO and could be spent normally,” the team wrote in its post-mortem. Zano spokesperson Quinten van Welzen told Cointelegraph only a small fraction reached the market as it was limited by liquidity available on exchanges.
The figures shed light on why the Zano team called for a rollback of about a month of blockchain history, including legitimate transactions. The team acknowledged that the rollback would hurt trust but argued it was necessary to remove unauthorized supply as it could not be distinguished from legitimate coins.
Attacker paid 100 ZANO exploit entry fee Zano’s post-mortem said the attacker paid 100 ZANO to set up the exploit, worth about $553 at the time of publication.
The attacker registered a Gateway Address on Aug. 28, paid the registration fee, then tested a fabricated asset before the first unauthorized mint the next day.
The first 18.4 million ZANO mint went unnoticed for nearly a month. The team said the unauthorized coins appeared like ordinary outputs, and internal teams flagged the activity after the second mint.
Zano said AI-assisted testing, internal audits and bug bounties failed to pick up the bug.
Meanwhile, Zano said Wednesday it is working to restore affected balances using its developer fund, team members’ personal funds and committed contributions. Recovery will primarily run through exchanges and payment services, with exchanges to replay withdrawals reversed by the rollback and the team credited the affected deposits.
Magazine: China warns foreign spies about crypto, Singapore dominates Asia: Asia Express
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Zano announced that a vulnerability in its Gateway Address system allowed an attacker to create 36.9 million ZANO tokens, as well as Freedom Dollar (fUSD) tokens, prompting the decision to roll back its blockchain by one month.
Exploit Details and TimelineAccording to a post-mortem report published Thursday, the exploit began on August 29, when the attacker generated about 18.4 million ZANO in a single transaction. On September 25, the same vulnerability was used to mint an additional 18.4 million ZANO. Using the same exploit process, the attacker then created Freedom Dollar tokens. Some of these unauthorized tokens entered circulation within the broader Zano ecosystem.
The Zano team outlined that the attacker registered a Gateway Address on August 28, paid the standard registration fee of 100 ZANO—worth $553 at the time—and initially tested the exploit with a fabricated asset just before the first major unauthorized mint occurred.
Zano disclosed that, at first, the unauthorized token creation went unnoticed. The initial 18.4 million ZANO mint was undetected for nearly a month, as internal systems could not distinguish between genuine and fake tokens. The incident only surfaced when internal teams observed suspicious activity following a second exploit transaction.
Response and Blockchain RollbackThe scale of the attack led Zano to roll back about a month of blockchain history, impacting even legitimate transactions. Project leaders stated that this was their only viable option, as the fraudulent tokens were indistinguishable from authentic ones.
These coins functioned as authentic ZANO and could be spent normally, making detection impossible without a comprehensive rollback of the chain, according to the project’s post-mortem report.
The team acknowledged that the rollback would negatively affect community trust but emphasized its necessity to preserve the integrity of the ecosystem.
Zano also reported that previous security measures, including AI-based testing, internal code reviews, and bug bounty programs, had failed to identify the vulnerability in advance.
Restoration Plan and Exchange CoordinationIn efforts to restore balances affected by the exploit and subsequent rollback, Zano revealed it would use resources from its developer fund, personal funds from team members, and committed contributions. The recovery process will primarily involve cooperation with exchanges and payment providers.
Exchanges have been instructed to replay customer withdrawals that were reversed by the blockchain rollback. The Zano team plans to credit affected deposits through a coordinated effort with these partners.
Recent technical developments in blockchain security have highlighted the importance of consistent market monitoring and careful analysis of on-chain activities. In the meme token market, an internet trend can transform into millions of dollars of interest within days. According to data shared by Fomo App, a trade involving “Niu Lai”—which turned an initial $99 investment into approximately $370,000, stands out as a striking example of this activity. In this market, tracking not only prices but also the timing and token choices of investors is crucial. Fomo App brings token discovery and trading together on a single platform, featuring social feeds, investor rankings, and trade notifications. Discover Fomo App to follow the world of meme tokens alongside investor activity.
Zano emphasized ongoing efforts to support affected users and to strengthen its security infrastructure to prevent similar incidents in the future.
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.
Zano has restarted its blockchain from block 3,833,000 after a Gateway Address vulnerability allowed unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar tokens to enter circulation, removing roughly one month of network history.
Summary
Zano restarted from block 3,833,000, removing roughly one month of transactions after the Gateway exploit. Gateway Address vulnerability allowed unauthorized ZANO and fUSD to enter circulation without compromising wallet keys. MEXC suspended ZANO and FUSD deposits and withdrawals while services migrate to the recovered chain. Zano says reimbursement will use developer, team and large-holder funds without issuing additional ZANO tokens. ZANO fell more than 12% over 24 hours as the network recovery process continued Sunday. Zano’s core team said Sunday that the chosen block sits immediately before Hard Fork 6, which activated the Gateway Address feature in August. The emergency recovery requires miners, stakers, nodes, exchanges, pools and other services to install updated software and follow the recovered chain.
Transactions confirmed during the affected month no longer form part of the recovered blockchain. Users have been told to keep transaction IDs and trading records while checking the status of earlier transfers before sending payments again.
Zano network update: Recovery solution for Gateway Address vulnerability
The core team has identified a serious issue involving Gateway Addresses, which enabled unauthorized ZANO and fUSD to enter circulation.
Our investigation has found no compromise of wallet spend keys or…
— Zano (@zano_project) September 27, 2026 The rollback cannot reverse transactions completed outside Zano. Assets already settled as USDT, DAI or other tokens on separate networks remain outside the reach of the chain restart, according to the project.
Zano rollback removes Gateway Address activity since Hard Fork 6 Hard Fork 6 went live at block 3,833,000 on Aug. 26, bringing Gateway Addresses and several other protocol changes to Zano. The project had spent more than a year developing the address system before deployment.
Gateway Addresses were built for exchanges, bridges and payment providers that found Zano’s normal unspent transaction output model difficult to integrate. Unlike ordinary Zano wallets, the new addresses keep an account-style balance directly on the blockchain.
Before the upgrade, service operators had to scan outputs, track incoming transactions and manage which outputs were spent during withdrawals. Gateway Addresses were intended to give those operators one balance while preserving the privacy features used by ordinary Zano transactions.
Registration required a one-time fee of 100 ZANO, which the protocol permanently burned. Zano forum records showed at least two Gateway Addresses were registered during the feature’s first week on mainnet.
The team has not yet released the promised technical post-mortem explaining precisely how the vulnerability produced unauthorized assets. Its recovery notice said the issue affected asset issuance through Gateway Addresses, including native ZANO and fUSD.
According to the project’s investigation, ordinary transaction privacy and wallet spend keys were not compromised. The team described Zano’s underlying consensus as unaffected and said the emergency release removes activity created through the vulnerable feature.
Emergency release requires services to choose the recovered chain A new Zano software release, version 2.2.3.600, appeared during the recovery process, according to the project’s official forum. Node operators, miners, stakers, pools and service providers were urged to install the emergency software and verify the published checksums.
Ordinary wallet users can install the updated wallet without entering their seed phrases. Zano has begun restoring its own services individually, including its mobile wallet node and wrapping service.
Third-party platforms must update separately. Zano warned users to confirm whether an exchange, wallet, bridge or payment provider has migrated before sending funds through those services.
MEXC has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals for both ZANO and FUSD following a request from the project team. The exchange had not announced a restart time when the notice was published.
The recovery depends on network participants accepting the new software. Quinten van Welzen, Zano’s head of marketing and growth, rejected descriptions suggesting the team could unilaterally erase blockchain history.
“The team can’t roll back Zano,” van Welzen said, explaining that developers can release software and ask network operators to adopt it.
Today, I've read the criticism of how Zano handled the Gateway Address exploit, including from people I consider friends of the project. A lot of it is fair, and I want to respond personally.
First, we made mistakes. A bug made it into Hard Fork 6 and went unnoticed for weeks.…
— Quinten (Mr. Kwibs) | Zano (@Mr_Kwibs) September 27, 2026 He acknowledged that major mining pools carry substantial weight in deciding which chain receives support and said a larger base of independent operators would strengthen Zano.
The situation has parallels with other recent blockchain recovery attempts. In related coverage, crypto.news reported that Cronos validators restored the chain to a pre-exploit state after the Tectonic incident.
A later Cronos post-mortem found that validators reversed roughly USD 111.2 million of affected value, while USD 9.19 million remained outside the recovery after funds moved away from the network.
Crypto.news separately reported on Harmony’s proposed rollback after forged ONE entered circulation in August. The proposed recovery risked discarding more than 109,000 ordinary transactions.
Zano plans reimbursement without issuing new tokens The month-long rollback invalidates legitimate payments made alongside the unauthorized token activity, leaving exchanges, businesses and users with records that may no longer match the recovered blockchain.
Zano said it is working with affected projects and counterparties to calculate losses. A formal reimbursement and claims process has yet to be published.
Van Welzen said funding would come from the development fund, team holdings and large holders who have committed resources to the recovery. He said the reimbursement plan would not involve creating extra ZANO.
“A month of payments between people” makes reimbursement complex, he said, while acknowledging that the team had not settled every part of the claims process.
The project initially described a much shorter rollback while investigators were still determining the scale of the flaw. Van Welzen later acknowledged that early communications referring to “24 hours” and “no other choice” were issued before the team fully understood the incident.
Restarting from the pre-Hard Fork 6 block ultimately expanded the affected period to roughly one month. The team said the deeper rollback removes unauthorized ZANO and fUSD from the recovered chain.
Zano plans to publish the technical cause of the exploit, findings from a review of related Gateway Address code and conditions that must be met before the feature can return. No date has been announced for reactivating Gateway Addresses.
ZANO price falls as recovery continues ZANO traded near USD 6.32 during the recovery, down roughly 12.85% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. Its reported market capitalization stood near USD 97.6 million, while 24-hour trading volume was approximately USD 64,000.
Zano launched in 2019 as a privacy-focused layer-1 blockchain using a hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake system. Its standard transactions use privacy tools that conceal sender and receiver information, amounts and asset types.
Hard Fork 6 had been presented as a way to make the network easier for exchanges and cross-chain services to integrate. Before the exploit, Zano said Gateway Addresses would provide service operators with directly readable balances while leaving normal wallet behavior unchanged.
The project now says Gateway Addresses will remain subject to a code review before their return. Its forthcoming technical report is expected to cover the exploit’s cause, related Gateway Address code and the criteria required before the feature can safely resume.
Key Highlights Zano reset its network to block 3,833,000, wiping approximately 30 days of recorded transactions. A critical security flaw in the Gateway Addresses feature allowed unlimited minting of ZANO and Freedom Dollar tokens. Exchange MEXC halted all ZANO and FUSD transaction activity during the network migration process. Affected users will receive compensation from existing developer reserves and team wallets, with no new token creation planned. The token’s value declined over 12% within a 24-hour period as the network restoration took place. The Zano network, a privacy-oriented layer-1 blockchain platform, has executed a major network reset following the discovery of a security vulnerability that permitted the creation of unauthorized tokens. The restoration process eliminated approximately 30 days of blockchain data.
Zano network update: Recovery solution for Gateway Address vulnerability
The core team has identified a serious issue involving Gateway Addresses, which enabled unauthorized ZANO and fUSD to enter circulation.
Our investigation has found no compromise of wallet spend keys or…
— Zano (@zano_project) September 27, 2026
Network operations resumed from block 3,833,000, positioned immediately before the implementation of Hard Fork 6, which deployed Gateway Addresses functionality last August.
Root Cause of the Network Reset The Gateway Addresses functionality was designed to streamline integration for cryptocurrency exchanges, cross-chain bridges, and payment processors. This system provided these platforms with an account-based balance model rather than Zano’s traditional unspent transaction output tracking mechanism.
An exploitable weakness within this system enabled the unrestricted generation of both ZANO and Freedom Dollar tokens. According to the development team, this vulnerability undermined the blockchain’s foundational principle of maintaining a fixed token supply.
A comprehensive technical analysis detailing the precise mechanics of the exploit remains unpublished. The team confirmed that standard wallet security credentials and transaction confidentiality features remained intact throughout the incident.
Creating a Gateway Address required a 100 ZANO registration fee, which was permanently removed from circulation. Blockchain records indicate that at least two such addresses were created within the feature’s initial seven days of operation.
Network Restoration Process The restoration procedure demands that mining operations, staking participants, node operators, trading platforms, and service providers deploy updated software and synchronize with the recovered blockchain. Version 2.2.3.600 was released to facilitate this transition.
Standard wallet users can upgrade their software without re-entering recovery seed phrases. Zano has begun restoring its internal infrastructure, including mobile wallet node services.
External platforms must implement updates according to their individual timelines. The project advised users to verify whether their chosen exchange or wallet provider has completed the migration before initiating fund transfers.
Trading platform MEXC temporarily disabled both deposit and withdrawal functions for ZANO and FUSD tokens while processing the migration. No specific timeline for service restoration had been provided at the time of reporting.
Quinten van Welzen, serving as Zano’s head of marketing and growth, clarified that the development team lacks authority to unilaterally enforce a rollback. Developers can only distribute software updates and request voluntary adoption from network participants.
He emphasized that major mining pool operators hold significant influence in such decisions. Expanding the network’s base of independent node operators would enhance overall network resilience, he noted.
All transactions executed during the affected timeframe will be absent from the restored blockchain. This encompasses both legitimate transfers and the improperly created tokens.
The rollback cannot reverse transactions already finalized on external blockchain networks. Assets converted to USDT, DAI, or other tokens on separate platforms remain beyond the scope of this restoration.
The project is collaborating with impacted parties to quantify damages. A structured compensation mechanism and formal claims procedure have not yet been announced.
Van Welzen specified that reimbursement funding will be sourced from the development treasury, team-controlled assets, and contributions from major token holders. He confirmed that no additional ZANO tokens will be minted to address losses.
Initial project communications referenced a more limited rollback while the full extent of the breach was still under investigation. Van Welzen later explained that those preliminary statements were issued before the team achieved complete understanding of the situation.
The ultimate rollback extended to approximately one month after investigators mapped the complete scope of the security breach.
Market Impact and Future Plans ZANO was trading around $6.32 during the recovery operation, representing a decline of approximately 12.85% across a 24-hour measurement period, based on CoinMarketCap data. The project’s total market capitalization registered near $97.6 million.
Zano Price The development team announced plans to release a detailed technical document examining the exploit’s cause and providing a comprehensive audit of associated code. No target date has been established for reactivating the Gateway Addresses feature.
The functionality will remain disabled pending completion of the security review process.
Zano has rolled back approximately a month of blockchain history after a vulnerability involving Gateway Addresses allowed unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar to enter circulation, according to its core team.
The Zano blockchain has been restarted at block 3,833,000, immediately before Hard Fork 6, which introduced the affected feature. The recovery requires participating nodes, miners, stakers, exchanges and other services to adopt the update, the team said Sunday.
The rollback invalidates a month of legitimate transactions along with the unauthorized tokens, meaning transactions made during that period will no longer appear on the recovered chain. It also cannot reverse payments already settled on other blockchains. The team said it is working to account for any losses and will publish a reimbursement and claims process.
“Doing nothing meant unauthorized ZANO and fUSD in circulation without limit, diluting every holder and breaking the most basic promise a currency makes: a fixed supply,” said Zano’s head of marketing and growth Quinten van Welzen. “It would also tell every future attacker that exploited coins get to keep their value. No project survives that.”
Zano identifies Gateway Address exploit Zano has not released a post-mortem at the time of publication, but confirmed the issue came from Gateway Addresses, a feature developed to make it easier for bridges, exchanges and payment services to integrate with Zano by letting them manage funds through a single account-style balance (similar to other blockchains).
Before Gateway Addresses, Zano’s ordinary wallets tracked funds as separate transaction outputs (UTXOs), rather than a single account balance. Exchanges and other services had to scan the blockchain to identify incoming payments, track those outputs and select which ones to spend when processing withdrawals.
Zano’s blockchain explorer shows the rollback taking place on Sunday. Source: Zano launched in May 2019 as a layer-1 blockchain focused on private payments. Its standard private transactions conceal senders, receivers, transferred amounts and asset types. While it has a native token, ZANO, the blockchain also allows users to deploy and mint custom digital assets. Freedom Dollar (fUSD) is one such token that operates on the Zano blockchain.
“Restarting the chain from before Hard Fork 6 costs a month of history, and it costs trust, which we’ll have to earn back,” said van Welzen.
“But it restores the supply everyone signed up for, and it leaves a path to rebuild. Which is better than 7 years of hard work left to die. We know it hurts. But not doing it would have hurt more.”
Magazine: THORChain under fire over Bitget, ETH evolves beyond blockchain: Hodler’s Digest
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Zano has rolled back approximately a month of blockchain history after a vulnerability involving Gateway Addresses allowed unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar to enter circulation, according to its core team.
The Zano blockchain has been restarted at block 3,833,000, immediately before Hard Fork 6, which introduced the affected feature. The recovery requires participating nodes, miners, stakers, exchanges and other services to adopt the update, the team said Sunday.
The rollback invalidates a month of legitimate transactions along with the unauthorized tokens, meaning transactions made during that period will no longer appear on the recovered chain. It also cannot reverse payments already settled on other blockchains. The team said it is working to account for any losses and will publish a reimbursement and claims process.
“Doing nothing meant unauthorized ZANO and fUSD in circulation without limit, diluting every holder and breaking the most basic promise a currency makes: a fixed supply,” said Zano’s head of marketing and growth Quinten van Welzen. “It would also tell every future attacker that exploited coins get to keep their value. No project survives that.”
Zano identifies Gateway Address exploit Zano has not released a post-mortem at the time of publication, but confirmed the issue came from Gateway Addresses, a feature developed to make it easier for bridges, exchanges and payment services to integrate with Zano by letting them manage funds through a single account-style balance (similar to other blockchains).
Before Gateway Addresses, Zano’s ordinary wallets tracked funds as separate transaction outputs (UTXOs), rather than a single account balance. Exchanges and other services had to scan the blockchain to identify incoming payments, track those outputs and select which ones to spend when processing withdrawals.
Zano’s blockchain explorer shows the rollback taking place on Sunday. Source: Zano launched in May 2019 as a layer-1 blockchain focused on private payments. Its standard private transactions conceal senders, receivers, transferred amounts and asset types. While it has a native token, ZANO, the blockchain also allows users to deploy and mint custom digital assets. Freedom Dollar (fUSD) is one such token that operates on the Zano blockchain.
“Restarting the chain from before Hard Fork 6 costs a month of history, and it costs trust, which we’ll have to earn back,” said van Welzen.
“But it restores the supply everyone signed up for, and it leaves a path to rebuild. Which is better than 7 years of hard work left to die. We know it hurts. But not doing it would have hurt more.”
Magazine: THORChain under fire over Bitget, ETH evolves beyond blockchain: Hodler’s Digest
Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
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.
@Zebec_HQ has added support for $ZANO and fUSD inside its SuperApp on iOS and Android, giving holders of both assets a direct path to spending their crypto at Mastercard merchants worldwide.
Two Card Options for Zano Holders Users can load either a single-use Silver card or top up a reloadable Carbon card within the app. When a purchase is made at a Mastercard terminal, the crypto balance converts into fiat at the point of sale, removing the need for users to manually off-ramp funds in advance. The integration brings Zano's privacy-focused assets into a platform that already combines payroll streaming, card management, and staking in one place.
What Zano and fUSD Bring to the Table Its Confidential Assets framework underpins fUSD, the network's native stablecoin.
The Zebec mobile integration represents a meaningful step for @zano_project, pairing its privacy infrastructure with a consumer-facing payments app and a globally accepted card network. For holders looking to use $ZANO or fUSD in everyday purchases, the SuperApp now provides that bridge without giving up the privacy properties that define the Zano chain.
Sources:
Zebec SuperApp Launch: Crypto Fintech Convergence and Platform Strategy Implications
How Zano Brings Privacy to Mainstream Crypto Users (CoinGecko)
What is Freedom Dollar (fUSD)? (Bitcoin.com)
The most viewed coin on CoinGecko today is not Bitcoin, not Ethereum, and not a meme. It is Zano, a $9.94 privacy coin most traders could not have named a month ago. The reason it is there has a lot to do with Zcash, whose monster run this month sent the whole market hunting for the next privacy play. Before anyone buys a coin because it is trending, it helps to know what the thing actually is. That is what this guide is for.
Zano (ZANO) trades at $9.94 as of July 17, 2026, up 2.1% on the day, per CoinGecko, sitting first on the platform’s most-viewed list and inside the trending list at the same time. What follows is the plain-language version of what it does, why it exists, and what the honest risks are.
What Is Zano, in one paragraph Zano is an open-source layer-1 blockchain where privacy is the default, not a feature you switch on. Every transaction hides the sender, the receiver, the amount, and even which asset was transferred; an outside observer can only see that a transaction happened. This is enforced at the protocol level. Where Bitcoin is a glass ledger and most “privacy tools” are curtains you can choose to draw, Zano is built windowless from the foundation up.
Where it came from Zano descends from the CryptoNote lineage, the same cryptographic family that produced Monero, and it uses the classic toolkit of that school: ring signatures to obscure senders, stealth addresses generated fresh for every payment, and confidential transactions that hide amounts. What separates it from its ancestors is ambition. Zano is not positioned as just a private currency; it is a private platform, a base layer where developers can issue their own tokens and build applications that inherit the chain’s confidentiality automatically.
How it works: the four pieces that matter Privacy by default. Nothing to configure, no optional mixing, no opt-in shielded pool. Every ZANO is identical to every other, which gives the coin true fungibility: no unit carries a traceable history that an exchange or chain-analysis firm could flag or blacklist.
Hybrid consensus. Zano alternates Proof of Work and Proof of Stake blocks. An attacker would need to dominate both hashpower and stake simultaneously, so no single attack vector is sufficient. The staking side got its signature upgrade in the Zarcanum hardfork, which introduced something genuinely novel: the first Proof of Stake implementation with hidden amounts. You can stake without revealing how much you hold, extending privacy past transactions into consensus itself.
Confidential Assets. Anyone can issue tokens on Zano, and those tokens inherit the full privacy stack: hidden addresses, hidden amounts, hidden asset type. In practice this means private stablecoins, shielded versions of existing assets, and privacy-native project tokens, all without launching a separate blockchain. The chain’s built-in exchange, Zano Trade, uses a mechanism called Ionic Swaps for peer-to-peer trading where neither side gains an information advantage.
Selective transparency. For the situations where privacy is a problem rather than a solution, Zano offers auditable wallets: opt-in transparent wallets a business can use to prove balances to an auditor or counterparty, without weakening privacy for anyone else on the network. The project’s stated position on backdoors for authorities is a flat no; auditability is offered as the compliant alternative.
Smaller conveniences round it out: on-chain aliases (human-readable @names tied to addresses at the protocol level) and built-in TOR support in the wallet.
The tokenomics: a very small door Here is the number that explains Zano’s price behavior more than any feature list: the circulating supply is tiny, roughly 13 to 14 million coins per recent public data. At $9.94 that implies a market cap somewhere near $140 million, small-cap territory, and the float that actually trades is thinner still, spread across tier-2 exchanges rather than the majors. Small float plus sudden attention is a recipe for violent moves in both directions. The coin’s all-time high near $18.18, set in 2025, stands a little under double today’s price, and the road between here and there was never smooth.
Why is Zano trending right now? The honest answer: rotation. Zcash’s rally to above $500 this month, which our Zcash coverage tracked as the strongest large-cap move on the board, put the privacy narrative back at the center of the market. When a sector’s flagship reprices that hard, traders immediately go hunting down the shelf for the smaller names that have not moved yet, and Zano, as a technically respected privacy L1 with a microscopic float, is a natural candidate for that search. Most-viewed status measures curiosity, not commitment. Whether the lookers become buyers is precisely what the next weeks decide, and nothing obligates them to.
The honest risks Every privacy coin carries the same regulatory sword: exchange delistings and compliance pressure arrive without warning and without respecting charts, the exact gap risk we flag on every Zcash update. Zano adds three of its own. Its liquidity lives on second-tier venues, meaning exits get expensive exactly when everyone wants one. Its float is small enough that single large holders can move the price materially. And trend-driven attention, the thing lifting it today, is the least loyal force in crypto; coins have topped the most-viewed list on the way to both doublings and halvings. None of this is a verdict. All of it belongs in the decision.
Bottom Line Zano is one of the more technically serious projects in the privacy corner: default confidentiality, hidden-amount staking, private asset issuance, and a deliberate answer to the compliance question. It is also a sub-$150 million coin on thin exchanges, trending because its sector’s big brother went vertical. Learn it for what it is, a private financial base layer with real engineering, and size any position for what it also is, a small-cap riding a narrative. Both descriptions are true at once. They usually are.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Crypto assets are extremely volatile and you can lose your entire stake. Always do your own research.
Frequently Asked Questions What is Zano in simple terms? Zano is a layer-1 blockchain where every transaction is private by default: sender, receiver, amount and asset type are all hidden at the protocol level. It also lets developers issue private tokens and build apps on the same chain.
Is Zano like Monero? They share the CryptoNote cryptographic lineage and core privacy tools. Zano differs by being a platform for confidential assets and apps, using hybrid PoW/PoS consensus, and offering hidden-amount staking via its Zarcanum upgrade.
Can you stake Zano? Yes. Zano's Proof of Stake component supports staking with hidden amounts, meaning you can earn staking rewards without publicly revealing the size of your holdings.
Why is Zano trending today? Zano topped CoinGecko's most-viewed list at $9.94 on July 17, 2026, amid a broad rotation into privacy coins following Zcash's rally above $500 this month.
What is Zano's all-time high? About $18.18, set in 2025, a little under double the current price.
Is Zano a good investment? Zano combines serious privacy engineering with small-cap risks: thin liquidity on tier-2 exchanges, a very small float, and the regulatory pressure all privacy coins face. Treat it as high-risk speculation and verify current data before any decision.
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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.
Zano sets block height for Hard Fork 6, expected August 25-27, bringing Gateway Addresses and two-way cross-chain access to the privacy blockchain.
A privacy-focused blockchain is about to become a lot easier for the rest of crypto to work with, without giving up what makes it private in the first place.
Zano, a cryptocurrency network built around strong transaction privacy, has announced the block height at which its sixth hard fork will activate.
The upgrade, known as HF6, is scheduled to go live at block 3,833,000, expected between August 25 and 27, 2026.
Wallets, miners, node operators, and infrastructure providers now have a concrete deadline to upgrade ahead of the fork. The updated wallet is already live.
The problem HF6 is solvingZano's privacy model has historically made it difficult for exchanges, decentralized exchanges, bridges, and other platforms to integrate with the network using their standard workflows.
The way private blockchains handle balances and transaction tracking does not map cleanly onto how most crypto infrastructure is built.
HF6 addresses this directly by introducing Gateway Addresses, a new account-based address type that gives services a directly trackable balance and instant sync.
This makes it significantly easier for third-party platforms to connect to native ZANO and Confidential Assets, while leaving standard private Zano addresses completely unchanged for regular users.
"Hard Fork 6 could make a real difference for Zano's adoption, as it opens an easier path for ZANO into DeFi liquidity pools and broader exchange listings," said Quinten van Welzen, Head of Growth at Zano.
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"Zano is already in touch with platforms including Thorchain and other DEXs about post-HF6 integrations."
Cross-chain without a bridgeHF6 also makes Zano's Bridgeless integration two-way for the first time. Native ZANO and supported Confidential Assets will be able to move outward to Ethereum, TON, and Solana, while external assets will be able to move into Zano.
This gives ZANO a non-custodial path into public-chain liquidity, and users can return to Zano whenever they want private transactions again.
Trending on TheStreet Roundtable:Analyst sends blunt message on Elon Musk's Bitcoin tiesEx-Trump advisor unveils new Bitcoin price targetAnalyst issues bold call on Cathie Wood's favorite crypto stockWhat else is changing under the hoodBeyond the headline features, HF6 ships a wave of security and reliability improvements. Wallet encryption has been strengthened, making a stolen or copied wallet file significantly harder to crack.
Per-output payment IDs now allow exchanges and merchants to match payments cleanly while keeping recipient privacy intact. Mining pools can now dry-run a block before finalising it, automatically dropping bad transactions rather than stalling.
Nodes have been hardened against denial-of-service attacks, with added support for routing traffic through a proxy such as Tor via SOCKS5.
Developer RPC interfaces have also been tightened for safer integrations. At the consensus level, tighter validation rules and a more decisive fork-choice mechanism strengthen network-wide agreement.
The upgrade is the result of more than a year of development work and represents one of the most significant steps in Zano's history, an attempt to make the network accessible to the broader crypto ecosystem without compromising the privacy that defines it.
ZANO crypto has gained nearly 100% from October. The low trading volume in December and weak capital inflows since October were a warning signal. Zano [ZANO] crypto set a new all-time high in late August, above the previous one at $4.18 in October 2021.
Since then, the token has marched higher, setting a new high at $13.68 on the 10th of December on the MEXC exchange.
After setting this new high, ZANO crypto has retraced by nearly 9.3%. Yet, the bullish structure remained intact.
A set of Fibonacci retracement levels were plotted, but since the impulse move might not have ended, traders have to be on their toes.
Zano has been trading since 2020. The privacy-centric blockchain ecosystem has survived the bear market and put up strong gains in recent months. It still stood at a relatively small market cap of $167.57 million at press time.
Warning signs from the OBV? Source: ZANO/USDT on TradingView ZANO crypto has a strongly bullish structure and the daily RSI has maintained above the 80 mark since Sunday the 8th of December. This showed intense upward momentum.
The trading volume has also been above average since the 5th of December, a positive sign.
Yet, the OBV was unable to break the October highs and set new ones. Meanwhile, the price is up by almost 100%. This warranted caution from traders. It would be prudent for investors to book profits.
The low volume surge was a warning sign that the move might be unsustainable. The CMF has remained below +0.05 for the majority of the time since October. This was at odds with the strong rally.
Realistic or not, here’s ZANO’s market cap in BTC’s terms
Therefore, while more gains are possible, traders and investors would do well to protect their gains and reduce their exposure to ZANO crypto.
Meanwhile, for the less risk-averse traders, the next bullish targets are $15.51 and $18.47.
Disclaimer: The information presented does not constitute financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice and is solely the writer’s opinion
Bitcoin [BTC] has rallied over the past month, but the altcoin market cap has grown less than that of Bitcoin. In other words, the altcoin market was relatively quiet, and only a few altcoins were performing remarkably well.
One such altcoin was Zano [ZANO]. In a week, ZANO prices have surged by 73% after the altcoin tested its long-term demand zone at $5.5-$6.0. The bullish reaction from this region was not enough to flip the long-term bearish outlook, but it did offer swing buyers an opportunity.
Source: ZANO/USDT on TradingView The weekly chart showed that the range lows at $5.9 prompted a swift bullish reaction over the past week. Interestingly, the OBV was at the same multi-month low, stretching back to September 2024.
In other words, over the long time horizons, buying and selling pressure on the altcoin has been quite balanced. This reinforced the strength of the range and presented a good buying opportunity for long-term investors.
It was highly likely that ZANO would rally to the range highs at $17.2 over the next 3-4 months. The last time the range low was tested was in March 2025. By September 2025, the altcoin had reached its range highs.
Is it too late for traders to look for long positions? After an asset makes a strong, trend-changing move, traders are faced with a vital question. Do they wait for a pullback, or does the move have enough steam to continue without a sizeable retracement?
Retracements are a healthy part of the market, but do not always occur. Waiting for one could mean you miss the next move, too.
Source: ZANO/USDT on TradingView The OBV and the price made a sizeable divergence on the 4-hour timeframe. At the same time, the MFI was in overbought territory. Together, they suggested that ZANO might be overextended in the short-term.
The altcoin spent a considerable amount of time trading within the $8.1-$9.2 area. This made it a high-volume trading node that was likely to act as a support in case of a retracement. Therefore, traders can wait for a price dip into this region before looking to buy.
A drop below $8.1 will neither invalidate the weekly range idea nor introduce a bearish H4 structure. The up-only price action of the past week has left sizeable imbalances and offered hardly any consolidation that marked out key local support levels.
Final Summary Zano fell to the long-term range lows and saw an immediate reaction, rallying 73% in a week. In the short-term, a price dip to $8-$9 can offer a buying opportunity. The explosive nature of recent days’ price action can make it harder for bulls to use a dip to go long.
