Zano Sets HF6 Activation Height Today as Privacy Chain Prepares to Open Up to More of Crypto

Zano is announcing today the block height at which Hard Fork 6 is expected to activate, starting the countdown for one of its most significant upgrades yet, designed to open Zano up to the rest of crypto while keeping privacy at the core of the network. 

Zano is known for its strong privacy, but that same privacy model has made it harder for exchanges, DEXs, bridges and other platforms to plug into the network using their existing workflows. Once activated, HF6 will bring Gateway Addresses to mainnet, a new account-based address type that gives services a directly tracked balance and instant sync, making it easier to connect with native ZANO and Confidential Assets while leaving standard private Zano addresses unchanged.

The network upgrade will activate on-chain at block 3,833,000, expected between August 25 and 27, 2026. That gives wallets, miners, pools, node operators and infrastructure providers a concrete timeline to upgrade ahead of the fork. The updated wallet is live now. 

“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” said Quinten van Welzen, Head of Growth at Zano.

HF6 will make Bridgeless two-way, allowing native ZANO and supported Confidential Assets to move outward to Ethereum, TON and Solana, and letting external assets move into Zano. That gives ZANO a non-custodial path into public-chain liquidity, while users can return to Zano when they want private transactions again. 

HF6 will also include security and reliability upgrades, including stronger wallet-file encryption that makes a stolen or copied wallet file far harder to crack, per-output payment IDs for cleaner exchange and merchant accounting while keeping recipient privacy intact, safer encryption/decryption RPCs for developers, and P2P DoS hardening with SOCKS5 proxy support to help protect nodes from attempts to overwhelm them. 

Under the Hood HF6 also ships a wave of security, privacy, and reliability improvements: 

• Stronger consensus: tighter, more uniform validation rules and a more decisive fork-choice rule mean stronger network-wide agreement and a more solid base layer. 

• Hardened wallet encryption: your wallet file now uses stronger encryption, making a stolen or copied file far harder to crack. 

• Per-output payment IDs: each output carries its own payment ID, so exchanges and merchants can match payments cleanly, with recipient privacy fully intact. 

• More resilient mining pools: pools can now dry-run a block before finalizing it, dropping bad transactions automatically instead of stalling. 

• Tougher, more private nodes: new anti-DoS limits harden the network, and node operators can now route traffic through a proxy like Tor via SOCKS5. 

• Safer developer surface: the RPC interfaces used to build on Zano have been hardened for safer integrations.

This is the result of over a year of focused work, and one of the most significant steps in Zano's history. The mission behind it is to make Zano usable and accessible for the world, without ever compromising the privacy that defines it.