Zano Monthly Project Update #16 - January 2026

Gonbatfire

• 6 min read
Zano Monthly Project Update #16 - January 2026

Welcome zAnons to the 16th Zano Project Update!

January kicked off 2026 with momentum on all fronts. The 2026 roadmap was officially released, outlining the ambitious upgrades ahead, from gateway addresses to a full Proof-of-Stake transition. On the development side, January saw some of the deepest core refactoring work in recent months, with gateway addresses taking center stage as the largest focus area. Meanwhile, the ecosystem kept expanding with new integrations, new whitelisted Confidential Assets and more. Let's dive in!

2026 Roadmap Released

Zano released its 2026 roadmap, outlining major upgrades including hard forks 6 & 7, bringing gateway addresses, a full Proof-of-Stake consensus upgrade, native $ZANO integration on the Confidential Layer Bridge, and much more.

Shortly after, Zano founders joined Vlad Costea on his podcast to discuss the roadmap in detail, covering gateway addresses and the full Proof-of-Stake upgrade.

Zano Fact #1: Zano Matrix Messenger offers a spam-free, decentralized, and private platform with end-to-end encryption. Connect with your Zano alias and start using it today!

Community Member of the Month

A huge congratulations to ZorroZano for earning this month's award! Zorro has been one of the most active voices on Zano's Matrix platform since practically its inception. What truly sets him apart is his eagerness to be among the first to jump on new Zano ecosystem apps, putting them through their paces and providing valuable feedback that helps the entire project move forward. The community willingness to experiment and test the latest tools makes is an essential part of Zano's growth. We're grateful to have someone so dedicated and hands-on in the community. Thank you, Zorro!

Ecosystem Growth and Integrations

Zano's TVL continues to grow. Privacy infrastructure scales when it works, and the $21M+ in TVL is proof that confidence in the ecosystem keeps building.

$ZANO is now available on NanoGPT, enabling anonymous access to leading AI models including ChatGPT, Claude, and more. Pay for AI services with complete privacy through zero registration and no KYC.

New Confidential Assets were officially whitelisted on Zano: $BCHX (Wrapped Bitcoin Cash), $SOLX (Wrapped Solana), and $TONX (Wrapped Ton). They now appear by default in the Zano wallet on both desktop and mobile, and are whitelisted on the Zano Trade DEX.

Zano Fact #2: 👁️ ETH: ~30% staked, public validators. 🔒 ZANO: ~70% staked, private validators. Zarcanum is the world's first fully private Proof-of-Stake.

Technical Upgrades

January focused on deep core refactoring, network feature expansion, and steady progress on gateway addresses. Alongside this, mobile and web tooling continued to mature, with several important infrastructure upgrades landing across the stack.

Core, Protocol & Networking

Serialization & Storage

  • Improved core serialization logic to prevent missing fields in future upgrades
  • Replaced Boost-based transaction serialization with crypto-serialization for better safety and consistency
  • Updated LMDB to the latest version from the official repository
  • Fixed a potential issue with portable storage memory usage
  • Improved serialization of ephemeral fields in KV storage

Stability & Debugging

  • Fixed an issue causing slow stacktrace generation on some platforms
  • Solved a rare alt-block validation issue
  • Added a new wallet error code for the "too many transaction inputs" case
  • Fixed incorrect calculations of max_net_seen_height and synchronization_start_height in get_info RPC
  • Improved native library performance across the board

Networking & P2P

  • Implemented SOCKS5 support
  • Added proper error handling in the P2P protocol
  • Configured storage limit policies for P2P connections
  • Fixed and hardened handling of unsolicited requests

Wallet, CLI & RPC

Wallet Fixes

  • Fixed a bug where a watch-only wallet could be initially stored with an empty password
  • Fixed handling of the comment field in alias-related operations
  • Fixed an issue with reset_connection in plain_wallet_api

RPC Improvements

  • Improved consistency and correctness in wallet and daemon RPC responses
  • Added a dedicated error code for excessive transaction input counts

simplewallet

Addressed multiple edge cases and reliability issues uncovered during testing

Gateway Addresses

The largest development focus this month was continued work on gateway addresses, laying the groundwork for more flexible integrations and future interoperability features. Development is ongoing and will be detailed further once the feature reaches a more user-facing stage.

Mobile & Desktop (Light Wallet)

Build & Infrastructure

All zano_native_lib dependencies are now built via CI, removing manual build risks

Mobile Wallet

  • Added alias search support
  • Adapted wallet sync logic to support the new sync_speed feature
  • Fixed daemon URL change workflow issues

Desktop Light Wallet

  • Continued work on the lightweight desktop wallet (remote-node client)
  • Preparing for an alpha release

Web & Ecosystem

Explorer

  • Testnet explorer fully restored and upgraded to match the mainnet version
  • Added Hashrate chart to the explorer
  • Backend improvements continued in preparation for further frontend updates

Zano Trade

  • Enabled SSR (server-side rendering) for pages, improving load speed and removing preloaders
  • Fixed featured and whitelisted asset handling
  • Added an interactive onboarding guide (merged to production this month)
  • Updated dependencies to eliminate known vulnerabilities

Wrapped Zano

Completed a full refactor:

  • Migrated to Next.js
  • Reworked wallet connection logic for better universality
  • Fixed multiple long-standing bugs

Website

Fully redesigned and refactored; not yet released, but nearing readiness

Media Content & Coverage

Check out this clip from Aaron R Day explaining Freedom Dollar ($fUSD), the censorship-resistant, private stablecoin built on Zano that can't be frozen or censored.

A new video tutorial was released showing how to make your Bitcoin private by bridging $BTC to Zano. You get a private version of Bitcoin with hidden amounts, untraceable transactions, and full confidentiality.

Zano Fact #3: Real privacy means SPENDING your crypto. Here are some places you can directly spend your $ZANO or $fUSD. Check it out here.

Zano Around the World

Zano Africa

January was a standout month for the African community. Zano branded gift boxes were sent to valued partners and followers, spreading the Zano love across Africa. The community also launched the Zano Africa TikTok account and went live with its first TikTok Live session, kicking off an exciting new chapter in social media outreach.

Zano Latam/Spain

The Spanish community gained 86 new followers on X and collaborated with the most relevant privacy KOL in the Spanish-speaking space. The account stayed active by following ecosystem trends, and a new strategy is now launching with retention work ahead.

Zano Indonesia

Zano Indonesia saw strong momentum this month. Telegram members and X followers grew more than 100%, forming an active community ready to drive discussions and support every post. This growth was fueled by the airdrop program, boosting engagement and organic referrals.

Zano Venezuela

The Venezuelan community gained 35 new followers on X! Original, interactive privacy content and informative articles were launched that made a massive impact. The team kept pace with ecosystem trends and a new strategy is officially live. The privacy revolution is here! 🇻🇪🚀

Conclusion

With the 2026 roadmap now public and execution well underway, the direction is clear: make private digital cash accessible, practical, and unstoppable. With gateway addresses as the next biggest development focus, we can't wait the kind of ecosystem developments this upgrade will bring. Thank you for being here, zAnons. 2026 is just getting started, and we couldn't be more excited to build it with you. See you next month!

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