What happend to the pirates in sprout adresses? Burned?
After deprecating Sprout shielded addresses, the funds are locked to those addresses and can no longer be migrated. Nothing "happened" to them, they are still there; however they cannot be sent anywhere under the current protocol. Some folks will be upset by this, but the reality is that this process started in late Nov., Sapling was activated Dec 15th, 2018, and users had until Feb 15th, 2019 to migrate; even if one didn't follow development closely, there was a 2 month window to migrate.
when you hold a token of a project, you definitely need to check the news every few weeks. a couple of months is enough for anyone, even for someone who went on vacation to an uninhabited island without internet and connection.