ZETA Solana migration wins 99.4% support in vote

ZetaChain has moved closer to approving a plan that would migrate its native ZETA token to Solana and eventually shut down its own Layer 1, with 99.4% of votes supporting Proposal 68 ahead of its Sept. 20 deadline.

Summary

• ZetaChain proposal has 99.4% support, with participation above its required 40% quorum before closing today.
• ZETA would become a native Solana SPL token through one-for-one conversion without increasing total supply.
• A second governance proposal must approve migration dates, snapshot height, claims, exchange coordination, and shutdown.
• Anuma would bring more than 300,000 users to Solana alongside its encrypted Private Memory Layer.
• Validators keep staking until Proposal 2 defines the ZetaChain halt and final network wind-down process.

ZetaHub’s live governance tally showed 58% participation, clearing the 40% quorum requirement, with 0.3% voting against and 0.3% abstaining. Voting is scheduled to close at 14:58:18 UTC on Sept. 20, after a standard 72-hour voting period.

The vote does not itself move ZETA or shut down the network. ZetaChain’s formal migration proposal says a successful vote authorizes core contributors to prepare a second proposal containing the actual migration mechanism, snapshot height, claim process, exchange arrangements and L1 halt schedule.

ZETA would move 1:1 to Solana without new supply

Proposal 68 would establish Solana as ZETA’s canonical network after migration. ZETA would become a native SPL token while retaining its existing ticker and total token supply. Each holder would receive an equivalent amount of ZETA on Solana through a 1:1 conversion.

One technical adjustment involves decimals. Native ZETA currently uses 18 decimal places, while the proposed Solana token would use nine. Proposal 68 says balances would convert from 18 to nine decimals and any amount below the supported precision would be rounded down.

Existing vesting schedules would continue through their original dates. The project says no new tokens would be created, while each address would receive its corresponding balance based on the final migration snapshot.

ZetaChain’s Sept. 17 announcement says ZETA already issued on Ethereum and BNB Chain is outside the scope of the current governance proposal. The core vote concerns ZETA native to ZetaChain and the future of the Layer 1 itself.

The project ruled out maintaining the new Solana asset as a wrapped representation backed by tokens locked permanently on ZetaChain. Its proposal states that a bridge would depend on the original chain continuing to operate, while the current plan eventually shuts that chain down.

Proposal 2 must approve the actual ZetaChain shutdown

A successful Proposal 68 would only approve the migration direction. ZetaChain validators would continue validating, users could continue staking and current balances would remain unchanged until another governance vote takes place.

Core contributors would first need to coordinate with exchanges that list ZETA. The governance proposal says Proposal 2 will not be submitted until participating exchanges have confirmed their token-swap procedures, because platforms require advance notice before committing to migrations.

Proposal 2 would then establish the block height used for the balance snapshot, the connected-chain withdrawal window, the chain halt, the Solana claim process and the exchange conversion period. It would contain the holder protections and technical details needed for execution.

ZetaChain plans to publish the snapshot export and checksum so balances can be independently reproduced. An archive node and explorer would remain accessible after shutdown, according to the proposal. Programs or contracts holding user ZETA during migration would undergo audits before handling the tokens.

Staking rewards would continue until the shutdown time specified in Proposal 2. ZetaChain has not yet finalized what staking could look like after the move to Solana, saying the future mechanism remains “under active exploration.”

Anuma and 300,000 users form part of the Solana plan

ZetaChain’s proposal reaches beyond its token. Anuma, its private multi-model AI application, and the Private Memory Layer behind it would move to Solana as part of the project’s new technical focus.

The company says more than 300,000 people have joined Anuma since February, with the application passing one million requests across 35 AI models. Its published data showed 301,195 users through Sept. 16.

Anuma uses encrypted memory intended to remain under a user’s control as the person moves among different AI models. ZetaChain says closed model providers receive only the context required for individual requests, while a private mode routes queries to open models using zero-retention infrastructure. Those privacy descriptions are company claims concerning the application’s design.

ZETA already has a utility role inside Anuma. Users can lock ZETA to receive credits and spend those credits on AI usage, with locked tokens removed from circulating supply while committed. ZetaChain wants other Solana applications and agents to connect to the same Private Memory Layer and use ZETA within that application system.

The project said “running our own L1 no longer helps us build private AI,” presenting the operating cost and security work associated with maintaining a separate Cosmos-based network as part of its case for moving.

Security work helped shape the case for leaving the L1

ZetaChain’s proposal specifically cites the maintenance burden inherited from Cosmos SDK and related components. Its node repository confirms that ZetaChain is built with Cosmos SDK and Cosmos EVM, requiring its validator network to coordinate upstream software upgrades and security patches.

The proposal refers to an Aug. 25 security response as an example. Cosmos Labs’ later technical post-mortem found that attackers exploited a critical Cosmos EVM vulnerability across six chains between Aug. 20 and Aug. 25. The incident prompted Cosmos security teams to coordinate with 40 networks while helping other chains patch or halt.

The public post-mortem does not identify ZetaChain as one of the six exploited networks, so the attacks should not be described as a ZetaChain exploit. The proposal instead cites upstream vulnerability management and validator coordination as continuing operational work associated with running its Cosmos-based L1.

As crypto.news reported during the Cosmos EVM security response, affected Cosmos EVM chains were advised to coordinate validator halts while teams worked to contain the vulnerability. A later crypto.news investigation into the Cosmos EVM attacks reported that approximately $5.72 million in stolen assets had been converted through decentralized and centralized exchanges across the confirmed incidents.

Meanwhile, ZetaChain’s public GitHub work already shows migration-related engineering. An open pull request added tooling to export ZETA state and calculate balances per address for snapshots, while its changelog includes emergency tooling for moving native assets during cross-chain shutdown procedures.

Solana infrastructure would replace ZetaChain validators

After a completed migration and L1 shutdown, Solana validators would secure the network hosting native ZETA. ZetaChain would no longer maintain its own independent consensus set for the token.

The project cited Solana’s speed, transaction costs, liquidity and agent infrastructure when explaining the proposed move. Its Sept. 17 announcement referred to confirmations of roughly 400 milliseconds and described sub-cent settlement as suitable for repeated AI-agent transactions.

Solana has since activated another performance change. The Solana Foundation’s latest engineering update says the network reduced its target slot duration to 250 milliseconds, following earlier reductions during August.

Solana’s 250-millisecond slot upgrade that the change raises the targeted slot rate to four per second, though overall computation limits were adjusted alongside the shorter slots.

ZETA traded around $0.0342 on Sept. 17, the date ZetaChain announced the migration proposal, before closing near $0.0400 on Sept. 19, according to CoinGecko historical data. The move represents an increase of roughly 17% across the two dates, though the price data does not establish that the governance proposal alone caused the rise.

If Proposal 68 clears the vote after 14:58:18 UTC, core contributors can proceed with exchange coordination and prepare Proposal 2. Until that second proposal passes, ZetaChain’s existing L1, staking system, validator set and native ZETA balances remain in operation.