ZetaChain Votes to Approve ZETA Migration Proposal to Solana
According to data from the ZetaChain governance page, governance proposal number 68 has been voted through with a support rate of 99.4%, against votes at 0.3%, and abstentions at 0.3%. The voting participation rate reached 58%, far exceeding the 40% legal threshold. According to the proposal, ZETA tokens will be converted to Solana's native SPL tokens at a 1:1 ratio, with the total token supply remaining unchanged.
Specific technical details show that the native ZETA token uses 18 decimal precision, while the migrated Solana SPL token will adjust to 9 decimal precision. The existing token unlocking plan (vesting schedule) will continue as originally scheduled and will not be interrupted by the migration. ZETA tokens circulating on Ethereum and BNB Chain will not be affected by this migration and will remain unchanged. Voting opened on September 17 and lasted for 72 hours, officially closing on September 20 at 14:58:18 (UTC).
The approved proposal number 68 is just the first step; the specific migration execution plan—including the block height for the snapshot, the claiming process for token holders, exchange integration arrangements, and the timeline for shutting down the original L1 chain—needs to be determined by a separate vote on a second proposal. According to the proposal description, the entire transition will take a "phased" approach, with existing validator nodes continuing to operate until the token migration is complete, after which the network operation responsibilities will officially transfer to Solana validator nodes. This path has been compared to Helium's migration of its L1 to Solana from 2022 to 2023.
Alongside the migration of ZETA tokens, ZetaChain's private AI application Anuma will also migrate. This application is set to launch in February 2026 and, as of September 16, has reached 301,195 users, processing over 1 million requests and covering 35 AI models. Its core mechanism allows users to lock ZETA tokens in exchange for AI service credits, and it saves session data through an encrypted, user-controlled "private memory layer". A social discovery feature is currently in testing.
The background for this shift is that ZetaChain experienced a security incident in April 2026 affecting team wallets (reportedly user funds were unaffected). By June 30, ZetaChain had completely shut down its cross-chain deposit services and disabled its core cross-chain interoperability features, meaning that its originally core selling point of "omnichain interoperability" has effectively been abandoned for nearly three months. Following the proposal announcement, the price of ZETA rose from approximately $0.0342 on September 17 to about $0.0400 by September 19, an increase of about 17% over two days, with trading volume increasing by about 40% during the same period.
From the perspective of funding and participants, this vote was jointly led by ZetaChain token holders and validator nodes. The 58% participation rate indicates that large holders (possibly including market makers and early investors) concentrated their votes in support of the migration plan, representing a typical governance event-driven price fluctuation rather than daily trading behavior. Beneficiaries include existing ZETA holders who bought after the announcement or did not sell, as well as the Solana ecosystem, which will soon take over network operations and may attract new users and liquidity. The parties under pressure are the original L1 validator operators and third-party developers relying on its native cross-chain infrastructure, who will face the costs of transitioning as their node roles are replaced and they need to adapt to the Solana environment.
ZetaChain cited Solana's performance data in the proposal, indicating that the network's settlement finality time is about 400 milliseconds, the median transaction fee is about $0.001, and under stress testing conditions, it can handle over 100,000 transactions per second. The total supply cap of ZETA tokens remains at 2.1 billion, unchanged before and after the migration.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
ZetaChain is not new to adjusting its core positioning—after a security incident in April 2026 affecting team wallets, despite claiming user funds were unaffected, the project voluntarily shut down its cross-chain deposit and interoperability services by June 30. This means its initial "omnichain" positioning has been effectively abandoned for nearly three months. The recent vote to migrate to Solana and position the AI application Anuma as a core selling point is a continuation of this strategic shift, rather than an isolated decision.
The path of resource and funding allocation is clear—ZetaChain is redirecting resources originally invested in building its own L1 validation network and cross-chain bridge infrastructure to directly leverage Solana's existing infrastructure (approximately 400 ms settlement time, about $0.001 transaction fee, and over 100,000 TPS under stress testing). This essentially means abandoning the sunk costs of building a foundational public chain and concentrating resources on the application layer with the Anuma AI product. The motivation is straightforward: the costs of maintaining L1 validation nodes, cross-chain bridge security audits, and interoperability protocol maintenance are high and have previously encountered security incidents, while Anuma has accumulated over 300,000 users and 1 million requests in just seven months. Betting limited resources on a proven growth application layer is more efficient than continuing to maintain a low-usage proprietary public chain.
The most direct historical analogy is Helium's migration of its L1 to Solana from 2022 to 2023—at that time, Helium also abandoned its self-built chain to leverage Solana's throughput and ecosystem effects, focusing on the application itself in the IoT incentive layer. ZetaChain's current operational path closely mirrors this template, with the application scenario shifting from IoT to a private AI memory layer. In terms of industry positioning, ZetaChain is transitioning from an "infrastructure-based public chain" to an "application project parasitic on leading public chains," which is a typical example of how small to medium-sized L1 projects have shifted towards an "application-first, public chain outsourcing" path under the dual pressures of stagnant growth and high security costs over the past two years.
This shift essentially represents a restructuring of the industry chain—independent public chains are no longer a necessity for small to medium projects to prove their value; instead, they have become a high-cost, low-return liability. When leading public chains like Solana have achieved sufficiently cheap and fast settlement speeds, transaction fees, and throughput, the marginal returns of continuing to build L1 for application layer projects sharply decline. Instead, concentrating resources on user-perceived product experiences (such as Anuma's private memory layer and AI credit mechanism) is more likely to lead to user growth. This restructuring occurs because public chain infrastructure is rapidly commoditizing; once underlying performance is no longer a scarce resource, project parties' competitive focus naturally shifts from "building their own tracks" to "running faster on tracks already laid by others."
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- When the track is fast and cheap enough, those who build the track should switch to building cars.
- User numbers are more valuable than the name of the chain.
- The most expensive part of sunk costs is the time spent unwilling to shut it down.