[XDA Assist] Atomic Worm:
Hello. First of all, let me just say I'm glad I was pointed to this place by a friend, and, while I know asking for help with your first post is simply bad form, I think you guys are my last hope for fixing this phone, so I'll just go ahead an explain.

Alright.

So, yesterday I decided to root my ZenFone 6 (A600CG) for the first time after about 9 months of use. Up until then, I didn't really have any interest in rooting or even unlocking the bootloader, or any knowledge of how to do anything with it at all.

So, I did a quick google search, and found this:

w w w.asus-zenfone.com/2015/05/one-click-root-for-zenfone-series.html

The whole thing felt a bit dodgy, what with the all the bat files and stuff, but I decided to go ahead anyway. And it worked just fine, my phone was rooted. Hooray. Time to go and install stuff I couldn't before, right?

That's when this came in:

w w w.asus-zenfone.com/2015/10/how-to-add-zenmotion-to-your-zenfone.html

So, I did that. What I didn't realize, however, was that my bootloader was still locked. And so I followed the instructions detailed on that tutorial and all, seemed to work. Except when my phone rebooted, all that showed up on the display was a USB symbol. It wouldn't boot. I swear, I nearly shat my pants at that moment. So, I set out to fix that.

I couldn't really find ANY decent tutorial on how to undo the soft-brick for the ZenFone 6 specifically, so what I did first was trying to sideload each and every single rom that ASUS has for the ZenFone 6 on their support page. None of them worked, all of them showed the "failed to verify whole-file signature" error when I tried to have them sideloaded with ADB. So, I followed these:

zenfone-blog.blogspot.com.br/2015/06/guide-how-to-unbrick-asus-zenfone-4-5-6.html

w w w.windroidica.in/2015/07/how-to-revert-back-to-stock.html

First the former, didn't work because the rom wouldn't sideload, then the latter. Now, I'm aware the latter tutorial deals with the ZenFone 5 (for some reason, everything out there regarding these devices is either for the ZenFone 2 or 5, almost nothing can be found regarding the 6), but I figured the two are similar enough that a ZenFone 5 firmware would most likely work on the ZenFone 6, since they're basically the same thing, except for the camera and display size. Well, I was wrong. It kinda worked, though, it was stuck on a bootloop at that point.

So, with my phone stuck on bootloop, instead of coming here for help before, this dumbass here tried to flash the recovery for a custom one (TWRP, in this case). Except the bootloader was locked. So, I tried flashing dnx and ifwi with a bootloader toolkit I found here on XDA-Dev. I don't even know what went wrong, but the bootloader is still apparently locked, fastboot won't flash TWRP on top of the current default recovery, and now the phone is soft-bricked again, with that USB logo appearing whenever it turn the phone on.

Is there any chance at all I can solve this, or should I just throw this in the trash and buy a new one? I'd rather solve it, as I quite like this device, even if ASUS is terrible with their updates.

PS: Sorry about the links, but I feel as though they're necessary to better explain the situation.

EDIT: Seems like the bootloop is back now.

EDIT 2: Finally found a working firmware (2.20.40.11)! Sideloaded it, but I got a message about installing the latest 4.3 version first. I'm assuming it refers to the Android version, and now I'm really not sure whether it worked or not, as the phone still seems to be on a bootloop. Confusing as hell.

EDIT 3: It wasn't even a bootloop, just a longer than normal boot! My phone is running again! Lost all my data, contacts, everything. It's as if I had bought it today. I'm happy, though. Feel free to lock this thread, the issue has been resolved!