Zano has restarted its blockchain from a point before the introduction of Gateway Addresses, removing roughly a month of transaction history after a vulnerability allowed unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar tokens to enter circulation.
According to Cointelegraph, the network was restarted at block 3,833,000, the block immediately before Hard Fork 6. That upgrade introduced Gateway Addresses, the feature identified by Zano’s core team as the source of the problem. The recovery requires nodes, miners, stakers, exchanges and other services connected to the network to install the updated software.
The decision means the network is discarding more than the unauthorized assets. Legitimate transactions completed during the affected month are also invalidated on the recovered chain and will no longer appear in its history. The rollback cannot undo transfers that were already completed on other blockchains.
Zano said it is working to determine the losses and plans to publish a reimbursement and claims process. The project has not yet provided that process or a final accounting of the unauthorized tokens. Zano head of marketing and growth Quinten van Welzen told Cointelegraph that the quantity of unauthorized assets was considerable.
Why Zano chose a rollback
The core issue was the risk that the unauthorized ZANO and Freedom Dollar, or fUSD, would remain in circulation. ZANO is the blockchain’s native token, while fUSD is a custom digital asset operating on the Zano network.
Van Welzen argued that leaving the chain unchanged would allow the unauthorized supply to continue expanding and dilute existing holders. In a statement published on X, he said the decision to reverse the chain was intended to restore the fixed supply that users had expected when they adopted the currency.
A blockchain rollback removes a period of recorded activity and returns the network to an earlier state. In this case, the reset preserves the chain’s history up to the block before Hard Fork 6, but sacrifices legitimate activity recorded afterward. That trade-off creates practical problems for users and services that relied on transactions made during the discarded period.
Van Welzen acknowledged that restarting before the hard fork costs both a month of history and trust. He said the team regarded that damage as less severe than allowing the project’s monetary system to remain affected by an unlimited supply of exploited tokens.
The Gateway Address vulnerability
Gateway Addresses were developed to make Zano easier for bridges, exchanges and payment providers to integrate. The feature allowed those services to manage funds through a single account-style balance, similar to the way account-based systems track holdings.
Before the feature was introduced, Zano used a model in which ordinary wallets recorded funds as separate transaction outputs, commonly known as UTXOs. Exchanges and other services had to scan the blockchain for incoming payments, identify the relevant outputs and choose which outputs to use when processing withdrawals.
Gateway Addresses were intended to simplify that process. However, the core team confirmed that the vulnerability was connected to the feature. Zano had not released a post-mortem explaining the technical details at the time of the report.
The updated chain does not currently activate the affected addresses. Van Welzen said they will return only after the Gateway Address code has undergone review, auditing and testing. The temporary removal is intended to prevent the same issue from being reintroduced while the code is examined.
Zano launched in May 2019 as a layer-1 blockchain focused on private payments. Its standard private transactions are designed to conceal the sender, recipient, transferred amount and asset type. In addition to ZANO, the network supports the creation and minting of custom digital assets, including fUSD.
Current market picture
Moneyiar market data at 10:04 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2026, showed ZANO trading at $5.7266801784, down 24.13% over 24 hours and 22.84% over seven days. The figures provide a market snapshot around the reported event, but they do not establish the cause of the token’s movement.
Other assets in the Moneyiar data set showed mixed performance at the same time. Monad (MON) was priced at $0.0259233891, up 3.26% in 24 hours and 3.03% over seven days, based on data recorded at 10:03 p.m. Plasma (XPL) stood at $0.1107463353, down 2.88% over 24 hours but up 17.93% over seven days. Telcoin (TEL) was $0.0016409013, down 0.49% over 24 hours and up 6.14% over seven days.
The Zano recovery now depends on broad adoption of the updated chain by network participants and service providers. Exchanges, miners, stakers and other operators must align with the restarted history for the change to function across the ecosystem. The promised claims and reimbursement process is expected to address losses linked to the invalidated period, although its terms had not been published in the source material.
For Zano, the rollback restores the chain to a state before the vulnerable feature was introduced, but it also leaves the project with the task of rebuilding confidence among users whose legitimate activity was erased.
