preferred on
Points of Focus
- ZetaChain holders voted 99.4% to shut down its blockchain and move ZETA to Solana.
- The vote formalizes a shutdown that effectively began after an April exploit.
- ZetaChain already turned off its core cross-chain features by Jun. 30.
ZetaChain tokenholders approved Proposal 68 on Sept. 20 with 99.4% support and 58% participation, well above the 40% quorum.
We are proposing to bring ZETA to Solana and along with it @AnumaAI, an AI app with 300,000 users.
Why Solana, what changes for ZETA holders, and where to vote: https://t.co/EeHZNvMose pic.twitter.com/cNNafUzUdu
— ZetaChain 🟩 (@ZetaChain) September 17, 2026
The vote retires the project’s Cosmos SDK-based layer 1 and converts ZETA to a native Solana Program Library (SPL) token at a 1:1 ratio, with total supply, ticker, and vesting schedules unchanged. The conversion excludes ZETA held on Ethereum and BNB Chain.
ZetaChain’s shutdown vote follows an April exploit
The vote formalizes something that had already largely happened. ZetaChain confirmed on its X account that an attack on its GatewayEVM contract on April 27 affected only internal team wallets. No user funds were affected.
Losses totaled $333,868, drained through a chained vulnerability in the contract’s arbitrary call function, which security company SlowMist found lacked proper access control and input validation.
The exploit landed within months of a separate, far larger incident already covered this month: the $292-million Kelp DAO exploit on April 18, which ran through a misconfigured LayerZero bridge. Two major cross-chain messaging failures hit within the same two-week window, both stemming from access-control weaknesses in the infrastructure connecting separate blockchains.
ZetaChain disabled its core product before this vote
ZetaChain paused cross-chain transactions the same day as the exploit and never fully restored them. Deposits were disabled on June 1, users received a 30-day withdrawal window, and by June 30 the company had fully wound down cross-chain deposit services across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Sui, and The Open Network, disabling the interoperability features that were the project’s original reason for existing.
This week’s vote formally ratifies a shutdown that had already happened in practice three months earlier. That sequencing matters for how the vote’s 99.4% margin should be read: It likely reflects consensus around a decision already made, not a genuinely contested strategic choice.
ZetaChain pivots to its Anuma AI app on Solana
ZetaChain’s stated future is Anuma, a private AI application launched in February 2026 that ZetaChain said had 301,195 users as of Sept. 16 and processed over 1 million requests across 35 AI models.
Anuma uses ZETA as an access token, with users locking tokens for AI credits and an encrypted memory layer storing session context. The app and token will both run on Solana going forward.
https://x.com/ZetaChain/status/2099563597244387773?s=20
ZetaChain raised $27 million in August 2023 from investors such as Blockchain.com and Jane Street Capital, positioning itself in the same interoperability category as LayerZero, Axelar, and Wormhole. Abandoning that category entirely, rather than losing share within it, is a materially different outcome for those investors than the cross-chain thesis they originally backed.
What ZetaChain’s second governance vote still has to resolve
A second governance proposal, without a set date, will finalize the shutdown block height, the balance snapshot, and the claims process for withdrawing assets from connected chains.
ZetaChain has said it won’t schedule that vote until exchanges confirm their swap arrangements. Validators can continue staking in the meantime, though what staking and rewards look like after the Solana migration remains, by the company’s account, still under review.
Share
Most read articles
