Zano Blockchain Rolls Back 24 Hours Due to Inflation Bug in Gateway Addresses

Zano, a privacy‑focused blockchain, disclosed on September 25 that an inflation bug affecting its Gateway Addresses required an unprecedented rollback of about 24 hours of transaction history. The bug allowed assets to be created when they should not have existed, prompting the network to erase the affected block range.

What Triggered the Rollback

Gateway Addresses were introduced in Hard Fork 6 (block 3,833,000 on August 26) to simplify handling of ZANO by exchanges, bridges and DEXs. These addresses maintain a directly tracked balance that services can read, bypassing the private UTXO system. The bug appears to involve code that moves value between gateway and confidential outputs, potentially creating extra coins.

Immediate Response

Zano’s official X and Telegram channels instructed users to halt all activity involving ZANO and Confidential Assets immediately. The team promised reimbursement for any economic losses caused by the rollback, though details on the reimbursement process and the total amount of unauthorized coins have not been released.

Impact on the Network

If the rollback proceeds, miners, stakers and nodes will adopt the revised chain, effectively deleting all transactions from the affected 24‑hour window. Legitimate transactions will also be removed, complicating loss assessment on a privacy‑centric ledger. Following the announcement, ZANO’s market price fell roughly 20%, trading around $6.05.

Next Steps

Zano has not yet published a technical post‑mortem, the exact rollback height, patched binaries, or the reimbursement procedure. The situation remains fluid, and further updates are expected as the team works through the remediation.