ZetaChain is on the verge of a landmark governance decision that would dissolve its own Layer 1 blockchain and move its native ZETA token to Solana, with 99.4% of participating votes backing the migration ahead of the September 20 deadline.
The ballot, known as Proposal 68, was published on the project’s official blog on September 17 and opened for voting the same day. It runs for 72 hours and closes at 14:58 UTC on September 20. Live tallies from ZetaHub, the project’s governance portal, showed 58% participation, comfortably clearing the 40% quorum requirement. Only 0.3% of participating votes opposed the measure, with another 0.3% abstaining.
Under the proposal, ZETA would become a native SPL token on Solana through a one-for-one conversion. The ticker and total supply would remain unchanged, and no new tokens would be created. Existing vesting schedules would continue on their original dates, and every holder would receive an equivalent balance on Solana, including locked and staked positions as well as Anuma credits.
One technical detail involves decimal precision. Native ZETA currently uses eighteen decimal places, while the proposed Solana token would use nine. Balances would convert from eighteen to nine decimals, with any amount below the supported precision rounded down.
ZETA already issued on Ethereum and BNB Chain falls outside the scope of the current proposal. The core vote concerns ZETA native to ZetaChain and the future of the Layer 1 itself. The project also ruled out maintaining the new Solana asset as a wrapped representation backed by tokens locked permanently on its own chain, arguing that a bridge would depend on a network it plans to retire.
A Two-Step Governance Process
A passing result on Proposal 68 does not itself move ZETA or halt the network. It only authorizes core contributors to prepare a second proposal containing the actual migration mechanism, snapshot height, claim process, exchange arrangements, and the Layer 1 halt schedule.
Until that second proposal passes, ZetaChain validators will keep validating and users can continue staking. Current balances remain unchanged. Core contributors must first coordinate swap procedures with exchanges that list ZETA, and the second proposal will not be submitted until participating exchanges have confirmed their token-swap processes, since platforms require advance notice before committing to migrations.
Proposal 2 would 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. 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, and any 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. The project has not yet finalized what staking could look like after the move to Solana, describing the future mechanism as remaining under active exploration.
Anuma and the Private AI Pivot
The migration extends well beyond the token itself. Anuma, ZetaChain’s private multi-model AI application, and the Private Memory Layer behind it would move to Solana alongside ZETA. 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 September 16.
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 framed the shift around cost and focus. Running its own Cosmos-based Layer 1 no longer helps it build private AI, the company said, and it pointed to Solana’s sub-second, sub-cent settlement as better suited for agent-scale activity. The September 17 announcement referred to confirmations of roughly 400 milliseconds and described sub-cent settlement as suitable for repeated AI-agent transactions.
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.
Security Burden Weighs on the Decision
ZetaChain’s proposal specifically cites the maintenance burden inherited from Cosmos SDK and related components. The 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 August 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 August 20 and August 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. The proposal instead cites upstream vulnerability management and validator coordination as continuing operational work associated with running its Cosmos-based Layer 1.
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, and the changelog includes emergency tooling for moving native assets during cross-chain shutdown procedures.
What Changes After Migration
After a completed migration and Layer 1 shutdown, Solana validators would secure the network hosting native ZETA. ZetaChain would no longer maintain its own independent consensus set for the token.
Solana has continued to improve its performance characteristics. The Solana Foundation’s latest engineering update says the network reduced its target slot duration to 250 milliseconds, following earlier reductions during August. 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 September 17, the date ZetaChain announced the migration proposal, before closing near $0.0400 on September 19, according to CoinGecko historical data. That 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 UTC, core contributors can proceed with exchange coordination and prepare Proposal 2. Until that second proposal passes, ZetaChain’s existing Layer 1, staking system, validator set, and native ZETA balances remain in operation.