Today, I've read the criticism of how Zano handled the Gateway Address exploit, including from people I consider friends of the project. A lot of it is fair, and I want to respond personally. First, we made mistakes. A bug made it into Hard Fork 6 and went unnoticed for weeks. Our first messages were rushed: we said "24 hours" and "no other choice" before we fully understood what had happened. That's on us, and I'm sorry to everyone who lost time, money, or trust because of it. Second, why the restart? Once the exploit was confirmed, there were two paths, and neither was good. Doing nothing meant unauthorized ZANO and fUSD in circulation without limit, diluting every holder and breaking the most basic promise a currency makes: a fixed supply. It would also tell every future attacker that exploited coins get to keep their value. No project survives that. Immutability exists to protect transactions made within the consensus rules. These coins were created by a bug that let those rules be broken. Fixing that doesn't override consensus; it restores it. Restarting the chain from before Hard Fork 6 costs a month of history, and it costs trust, which we'll have to earn back. But it restores the supply everyone signed up for, and it leaves a path to rebuild. Which is better than 7 years of hard work left to die. We know it hurts. But not doing it would have hurt more. Third, nobody "pressed a button." The team can't roll back Zano. What it can do is publish new source code and ask the majority of the network to run it. That's exactly why we had to ask everyone to stop transacting and to update: if the team could flip a switch, none of that would have been necessary. Pools, exchanges, node operators, and wallets each decide for themselves whether and when to switch. In practice, a few large players like the major mining pools carry a lot of weight in that decision, and that's a fair point to raise. A broader base of independent operators would make Zano stronger, and that's something we should all work toward. Fourth, reimbursement. The team intends to make the community whole, and I won't pretend that's simple. A month of payments between people, each depending on the one before it, is genuinely complex, and I don't have all the answers yet on how the process will work. What I can tell you is where the money comes from: the dev fund, team funds, and large holders who have committed to contribute. No additional coins will be issued. Nobody's holdings get diluted to pay for this. Instead of walking away, the team and some of the project's biggest supporters chose to double down and put their own funds on the line. In my opinion, that's a strong sign and shows the team's and community's commitment to not just give up. Finally, what comes next? The team will publish the technical cause, a review of the related code, and clear criteria before Gateway Addresses return. Bugs can happen in any project. How you respond to them is a choice. I'm still here because I believe in what Zano is building: a private economy that anyone can use. That trust has to be earned back with work, not words, and that's what we intend to do. Thank you to everyone who stayed, questioned us, and held us to a higher standard. From here, we rebuild.