ZetaChain holders pull the plug on L1, vote 99.4% in favor of trading cosmos for Solana ☄️

Tokenholders of ZetaChain have approved a plan to wind down the project's Cosmos SDK-based layer-1 blockchain and migrate its native ZETA token to Solana, according to governance proposal 68. The vote concluded Sunday with 99.4% support and 58% participation, surpassing the network's 40% quorum requirement. Under the proposal, ZETA will become an SPL token on Solana through a 1:1 conversion, retaining the same ticker and total supply.

The vote does not immediately trigger ZetaChain's shutdown or migration. Core contributors will submit a second proposal specifying the withdrawal window for cross-chain assets, the snapshot block height, the shutdown timetable, the token claim process and the exchange conversion period. Validators will continue operating and staking rewards will continue paying out during the transition.

ZetaChain said maintaining its own layer-1 network no longer supports its focus on Anuma, a private-focused artificial intelligence application. The project stated that moving to Solana would let it redirect resources away from blockchain maintenance and toward Anuma and its Private Memory Layer, a system designed to let users carry encrypted context across AI models. ZetaChain was founded in 2021 as an interoperability-focused project connecting assets and data across blockchains, and in 2023 raised $27 million from Blockchain.com, Jane Street Capital, Human Capital and Sky9 Capital to build out its network.

The decision follows similar moves by other crypto projects. In August, BounceBit opted to retire its standalone blockchain after an authorization flaw was exploited to steal about $3 million in BB tokens, migrating its token to BNB Smart Chain at a 1:1 ratio. On Sept. 6, Harmony proposed shutting down its layer-1 and migrating its native ONE token to Ethereum as an ERC-20, as part of a pivot to an AI video initiative. That proposal came weeks after an exploit created unauthorized ONE tokens and led Harmony to plan a rollback of more than 109,000 transactions.

ZetaChain itself suffered a $334,000 exploit in April targeting its cross-chain gateway contract, which drained funds from ZetaChain-controlled wallets across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Smart Chain. The project later acknowledged it had dismissed an earlier bug bounty report about the vulnerability as intended behavior, prompting a review of its security processes.