Type Layer 1 network DAO (Cosmos SDK chain), winding down Governance token $ZETA (staking and governance) Governance mechanism Cosmos SDK x/gov: on-chain, stake-weighted Mainnet 1 February 2024 ( whitepaper (https://www.zetachain.com/whitepaper.pdf) ) Voting rules 72-hour vote, 40% quorum, more than 50% Yes to pass, 33.4% veto ( gov parameters (https://zetachain-api.polkachu.com/cosmos/gov/v1/params/tallying) ) Decision Shut down the L1 and move $ZETA to Solana: Proposal 68 (https://hub.zetachain.com/governance/proposal/68) (direction), Proposal 70 (https://hub.zetachain.com/governance/proposal/70) (mechanism and dates) Status 🟢 Active; the chain halts at block 20,755,000, expected around 9 December 2026 Website zetachain.com (https://www.zetachain.com)

ZetaChain is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 blockchain, launched on 1 February 2024, on which one smart contract could hold and move assets on Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana and other chains without wrapping or a bridge ( whitepaper (https://www.zetachain.com/whitepaper.pdf) ). Its holders govern it on-chain with $ZETA, and in two votes in September and November 2026 they decided to shut the chain down and move $ZETA to Solana as a native token, one for one under the same ticker. The chain halts at block 20,755,000, expected around 9 December 2026, and is not restarted ( Proposal 70 (https://hub.zetachain.com/governance/proposal/70) ). It is the second network in this directory to leave its own chain for Solana by holder vote, after Helium (/wiki/daos/networks/helium) in 2023.

How did ZetaChain vote to shut down its own chain? In two proposals, the first deciding the direction and the second the terms. Proposal 68 (https://hub.zetachain.com/governance/proposal/68) , "Migrate ZETA to Solana", ran from 17 to 20 September 2026 and passed with 99.4% of votes in favour: about 264m $ZETA Yes against 0.7m No and 0.8m Abstain ( on-chain tally (https://zetachain-api.polkachu.com/cosmos/gov/v1/proposals/68) ). It approved making $ZETA an SPL token on Solana and winding down the L1 once holders and connected-chain assets had moved, and said a second proposal would set the dates and that nothing would move before it passed. The team's case, in the announcement (https://www.zetachain.com/blog/bringing-zeta-and-private-ai-to-solana) of 17 September and the proposal text, is that running its own chain no longer helped it build its product, Anuma, a private AI app that had passed 300,000 users since February 2026 and whose successor on Solana is ZetaLabs. As a Cosmos SDK chain, ZetaChain had to coordinate every upstream security patch across dozens of independent validators. Proposal 70 (https://hub.zetachain.com/governance/proposal/70) , "Migrate ZETA to Solana: Mechanism, Dates, and Holder Protections", was submitted on 4 November and closed on 7 November 2026. It passed with about 313.6m $ZETA voting Yes and 420 $ZETA voting No ( on-chain tally (https://zetachain-api.polkachu.com/cosmos/gov/v1/proposals/70) ), roughly 83% of the 376m $ZETA staked on 8 November ( staking pool (https://zetachain-api.polkachu.com/cosmos/staking/v1beta1/pool) ). Under the Cosmos SDK's rules a delegator who does not vote inherits their validator's vote; the Cosmos Hub (/wiki/daos/networks/cosmos-hub) page explains how that and the tally work.

What happens to $ZETA holders? Proposal 70 sets the steps: - Snapshot. At block 20,755,000 every balance is recorded per address, staked, unbonding and unclaimed rewards included, so nobody needs to unstake. The same block is the halt. - Mint. The ZetaChain Foundation mints the snapshot total as an SPL token on Solana, part of it early for exchanges and the rest into a vault the migration program owns, then revokes the mint authority. - Claim. From 9 December 2026 a holder signs a message at the ZetaHub migration portal naming a Solana wallet and receives the full snapshot balance, with no fee. The minimum is 10 $ZETA, and the path is one-way. $ZETA held in smart contracts and pools cannot be claimed by a key, so holders are told to unwrap and exit pools before the snapshot. Exchanges convert their customers' balances on windows they announce themselves. The 600m $ZETA issued as an ERC-20 on Ethereum is unchanged, and the maximum supply stays 2.1bn less a burn ( whitepaper (https://www.zetachain.com/whitepaper.pdf) ).

What happens to validators and bridged assets? Staking rewards stop at the snapshot block. About 55m $ZETA of the 210m set aside for validator rewards will not have been paid out by then; the Foundation burns it in twelve monthly instalments through 2027, and the 2.5% yearly issuance planned from the chain's fourth year never starts ( Proposal 70 (https://hub.zetachain.com/governance/proposal/70) ). Cross-chain transfers had already ended: inbound transfers were disabled in June 2026 and withdrawals closed on 1 July. Holders of bridged ZRC-20 tokens claim the underlying asset on its original chain from 9 December, except balances worth less than $5 per token and tokens held in pools or contract wallets. ZetaScan and a read-only archive node stay up until at least 31 October 2027.

How Caper approaches this ZetaChain's holders could change everything by vote, the chain's own existence included, and a holder who voted No still moves to Solana on the same terms or does not move at all. A caper (/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) runs on Radix rather than a chain of its own, and a member who disagrees with where it is heading does not have to wait for a migration: any member who has voted can leave at any time (/wiki/foundations/leaving-a-caper) with their fair share of the treasury. The exit rights (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) page compares this with Moloch's ragequit, and winding down a DAO (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/dao-wind-downs) covers other DAOs that voted to close.