ZetaChain holders approve plan to wind down L1, move ZETA to Solana

ZetaChain tokenholders have voted to retire the project's Cosmos SDK-based layer-1 blockchain and move the native ZETA token to Solana. Governance proposal 68 passed with overwhelming support—99.4% in favor—and 58% participation, clearing the network's 40% quorum threshold. Under the approved plan, ZETA will be reissued as an SPL token on Solana at a 1:1 conversion while retaining its existing ticker and total supply.

The governance text clarifies that the passed vote does not immediately initiate a shutdown or the token migration. Core contributors will next file a follow-up proposal that lays out operational details including the withdrawal window for assets linked to other chains, the snapshot block height, a shutdown timetable, the token claim process, and the exchange conversion period. In the interim, validators are expected to continue operating and staking rewards will remain active during the transition.

ZetaChain said maintaining an independent layer-1 is no longer aligned with its development priorities, specifically citing a pivot toward Anuma, a private-focused AI application, and a Private Memory Layer that enables encrypted context to persist across AI models. The team indicated that migrating ZETA to Solana would let it reallocate resources from chain maintenance toward those products.

The move follows a wave of similar shutdowns by other projects. BounceBit retired its standalone chain in August and moved its token to BNB Smart Chain after an exploit; Harmony has proposed shutting down its layer-1 and migrating ONE to Ethereum amid operational and security setbacks. ZetaChain itself experienced a $334,000 exploit in April that drained funds from wallets across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Smart Chain, and later acknowledged it had dismissed an earlier bug bounty report about that vulnerability, prompting an internal security review.