TL;DR:
- ZetaChain approved with 99.4% of votes to migrate its ZETA token to Solana as an SPL token, implementing a 1:1 conversion and the same total supply.
- Governance proposal 68 exceeded the 40% quorum with 58% participation, but does not determine the immediate shutdown of the Layer-1.
- The project will abandon its Cosmos SDK-based network to redirect resources toward Anuma, its privacy-focused artificial intelligence application.
Native chains keep disappearing from the market. ZetaChain, an interoperability project founded in 2021, approved through a governance vote to migrate its native ZETA token to Solana and discontinue its Cosmos SDK-based Layer-1. Proposal 68 received 99.4% support with a participation of 58%, comfortably exceeding the minimum quorum of 40% required by the network.
The conversion will be at a 1:1 ratio, maintaining the same ticker and total supply. However, the approval does not immediately determine the shutdown process.
Key contributors will need to submit a second proposal detailing the withdrawal window for assets linked to other blockchains, the snapshot block height, the shutdown schedule, the token claim process, and the conversion period for exchanges. Validators will continue operating and staking rewards will remain active during the transition.
ZetaChain: From Interoperability to Artificial Intelligence
The project justified the abandonment of its Layer-1 by stating that maintaining a Cosmos SDK-based network is no longer compatible with its new strategic focus: Anuma, its privacy-oriented artificial intelligence application. Migrating to Solana will allow the project to redirect resources away from infrastructure maintenance toward Anuma and its Private Memory Layer, a layer that enables users to carry encrypted context across different AI models.
ZetaChain had raised $27 million in 2023 from investors including Blockchain.com, Jane Street Capital, Human Capital, and Sky9 Capital to develop precisely the Layer-1 network it is now discarding.
Restructuring of the Crypto Industry
Other networks have already made the same decision. BounceBit shut down its independent chain in August following an authorization failure that led to the theft of approximately $3 million in BB tokens, migrating to BNB Smart Chain also at a 1:1 ratio.
Harmony, for its part, proposed on September 6 to shut down its Layer-1 and convert its ONE token into an ERC-20 on Ethereum, as part of a shift to focus on artificial intelligence video initiatives, after an exploit generated unauthorized tokens and forced the planning of a rollback of more than 109,000 transactions.
ZetaChain also has its own track record: in April it suffered a $334,000 exploit that drained funds from its wallets on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and BNB Smart Chain, and the protocol later admitted to having dismissed a prior bug bounty report about that same vulnerability.
