ZetaChain holders approve L1 shutdown and Solana migration

ZetaChain tokenholders approved Governance Proposal 68 on Sunday to wind down the project's Cosmos-based layer 1 and migrate its native ZETA token to Solana. The proposal received 99.4% support with 58% participation, exceeding the network's 40% quorum requirement. Under the plan, ZETA will become an SPL token on Solana through a 1:1 conversion, while keeping the same ticker and total supply. The vote does not immediately trigger the shutdown or migration. Core contributors will submit a second proposal covering the withdrawal window for assets linked to other blockchains, 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 during the transition. ZetaChain said its Cosmos SDK-based layer 1 no longer supports its focus on Anuma, its private-focused artificial intelligence application. The project said the move to Solana would let it redirect resources from blockchain maintenance to Anuma and its Private Memory Layer, which allows users to carry encrypted context across AI models. ZetaChain was founded in 2021 as an interoperability-focused project designed to connect assets and data across blockchains. In 2023, it raised $27 million from investors including Blockchain.com, Jane Street Capital, Human Capital and Sky9 Capital to develop its layer 1. Other projects have also announced plans to shut down standalone blockchains. BounceBit opted in August to retire its standalone blockchain after an authorization flaw was exploited to steal about $3 million in BB tokens, and migrated its token to BNB Smart Chain at a 1:1 ratio instead of restarting its layer 1. 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 proposed pivot to an AI video initiative. That proposal followed an exploit that created unauthorized ONE tokens and led Harmony to plan a rollback of more than 109,000 transactions. ZetaChain suffered a $334,000 exploit in April that targeted its cross-chain gateway contract and drained funds from ZetaChain-controlled wallets across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Smart Chain. The project later acknowledged that it had dismissed an earlier bug bounty report about the vulnerability as intended behavior and said it would review its security processes.