Zano Hard Fork 6 lets native ZANO bridge to Ethereum

Zano has activated Hard Fork 6 on its mainnet, marking the biggest network change in the privacy-focused blockchain's seven-year history.

The upgrade introduces Gateway Addresses, a new account-based address type designed to make the network easier for centralised exchanges, decentralised exchanges and bridges to integrate. It also allows the native ZANO token to move non-custodially from Zano to transparent blockchains including Ethereum, Solana and TON.

This expands asset transfers on the network. Previously, assets such as bitcoin, ether and solana could be bridged into Zano and use its privacy features, but the native token could not move out in the same way.

With Hard Fork 6 now live, ZANO can be transferred to external networks, where transactions remain public on those chains. When assets are bridged back to Zano, they regain the privacy protections available through the network's standard address system.

Standard addresses remain unchanged and continue to use the existing privacy model. Gateway Addresses sit alongside that structure rather than replacing it.

The shift addresses one of the practical limits privacy-focused blockchains have faced when dealing with trading venues and service providers. Zano's UTXO model supports its privacy design, but it has also required custom engineering work from third-party platforms that need directly trackable balances and faster account synchronisation.

Gateway Addresses are intended to meet that need by giving service operators a single balance that can be tracked directly. The feature targets exchanges, bridges, decentralised trading platforms and other infrastructure providers that need account-style state to support deposits, withdrawals and internal reconciliation.

Quinten van Welzen, Head of Growth at Zano, linked the upgrade to the project's efforts to broaden distribution of the token across trading and liquidity venues.

"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, with Zano already in touch with platforms including THORchain and other DEXs about post-HF6 integrations," van Welzen said.

Integration changes

The account-based addition is one of the most significant structural changes in the upgrade because it changes how external services can interact with the network without altering the privacy setup for ordinary users. The underlying UTXO model remains central to the protocol.

"The UTXO model is fundamental to Zano's privacy, so replacing it was never the goal. Gateway Addresses add the account-style state that large services need while preserving the privacy guarantees of standard Zano addresses," said Andrey Sabelnikov, Co-founder and Lead Developer at Zano.

Alongside the new address type and cross-chain token movement, Hard Fork 6 includes a range of changes to consensus, wallet security, mining pool operations and developer tooling.

The network's consensus rules have been tightened with more uniform validation and a stricter fork-choice rule, intended to improve agreement across the network. Wallet file encryption has also been strengthened to make copied or stolen wallet files harder to crack.

Another addition is per-output payment IDs, which allow exchanges and merchants to match incoming payments at a more granular level while keeping recipient privacy intact. The feature may be particularly relevant for businesses that need cleaner bookkeeping around customer deposits and settlements.

Mining pools are also getting a change that allows them to test a block before finalising it, so invalid transactions can be dropped without forcing operations to stall. At the node level, the network now includes anti-denial-of-service limits and support for routing traffic through a SOCKS5 proxy such as Tor.

Zano has also hardened the remote procedure call interfaces used by developers and service operators. These interfaces are often where wallets, exchanges and applications connect to a blockchain, making them a key part of integration work.

Cross-chain push

The ability to bridge native ZANO to transparent chains places the project more directly in the wider market for decentralised finance activity. On external networks, the token can in principle be used in pools, swaps and other applications outside Zano's own chain before being returned to the privacy network.

The approach reflects a broader trend among specialist blockchain networks seeking access to liquidity and users on larger ecosystems without abandoning their original design principles. In Zano's case, the project is trying to combine a privacy-preserving base layer with a more flexible route into public-chain markets.

The upgrade also arrives as the project develops an execution environment intended to expand what can be built around the network. Zano is working on Zano Execution Layer, or ZEL, described as an EVM sidechain that would bring smart contracts to the ecosystem while leaving the main layer 1 chain focused on privacy.

The project has also outlined a separate move towards a pure proof-of-stake consensus system known as Zenith. Under the proposed design, blocks would arrive every 15 seconds in epochs of about 10 minutes.

For now, the main operational change is that exchanges, bridges and decentralised platforms have a new way to integrate the network, while native ZANO can move to public chains and return with privacy protections restored.