ZetaChain Votes 99.4% to Retire Its Layer 1 and Move ZETA to Solana

ZetaChain's token holders voted on Sunday to shut down the project's own blockchain and turn ZETA into a token on Solana. Proposal 68 passed at 10:58 a.m. Eastern time with 99.4% in favor, 0.3% against and 0.3% abstaining. Turnout was 58%, above the 40% quorum. The Block reported the result that afternoon, and the same three percentages appear in a ChainCatcher report and in Crypto Briefing on Monday. No date for switching the chain off has been set.

How the swap is meant to work

Each ZETA on the Layer 1 becomes one ZETA issued natively on Solana, as an SPL token, the network's standard token format. The ticker stays the same. So do total supply and every vesting schedule, and no new tokens are minted. The accounts read here agree on those points. ZETA held on Ethereum and BNB Chain is left out of this conversion. Crypto Briefing adds two details no other account carries, a supply capped at 2.1 billion and a move from 18 decimal places to nine, and both stand on that one outlet.

The team's case against running a chain

The argument in the proposal is about maintenance. ZetaChain is built on the Cosmos SDK, the shared framework behind dozens of independent chains, and every fix to that framework has to be rolled out by each chain's own validator set. This desk covered a bug in Cosmos EVM software behind a six-chain hack last month. The team, quoted by The Block, expects the workload to grow.

"AI tooling is making such vulnerabilities easier to find, as the August 25 patch showed, so there will be more," the team said.

What the project wants to keep is Anuma, an AI app launched in February. The Block and the KuCoin relay both give it more than 300,000 users and 1 million requests across 35 models, with holders locking ZETA to pay for AI credits. Anuma moves to Solana with the token. ChainCatcher's account quotes the team calling an independent chain "no longer necessary."

A chain that had already shrunk

ZetaChain raised $27 million in August 2023, with Blockchain.com and Jane Street among the backers, and launched its mainnet in January 2024. It was pitched as an interoperability network, in the same field as LayerZero, Axelar and Wormhole. Crypto Briefing reports that an April exploit hit team wallets, with user funds said to be safe, and that cross-chain deposits and the core interoperability features were switched off by 30 June. That history comes from one outlet and was not confirmed elsewhere in this sweep. Harmony proposed a similar exit from its own Layer 1 earlier this month. Price readings depend on the window. Crypto Briefing had ZETA up about 11% when the proposal was reported. The Block had it down about 2.5% over the 24 hours after the vote. Those are different windows, so they do not contradict each other. They do not add up to a verdict either.

The second vote holds the dates

Sunday's vote settles the direction and leaves the calendar open. A second proposal is meant to name the block height for the balance snapshot, the block at which the chain stops and the claims process. Staking continues until then, according to the ChainCatcher account. Nothing published by Monday morning says when that proposal will be filed. Holders on Ethereum and BNB Chain have no conversion route yet, and none of the accounts read here says what happens to those tokens.