ZetaChain token holders have voted to wind down the project's Layer 1 blockchain and relocate the ZETA token to Solana, approving Proposal 68 with 99.4% support on 58% participation, according to the governance tally published by The Defiant.

The decision marks an unusual endpoint for a standalone interoperability chain: rather than iterate on its own consensus layer, the ZetaChain community has chosen to retire the network entirely and continue as a Solana-based asset. The vote count itself is only the first procedural step. Before the migration can proceed, exchanges holding or listing ZETA must confirm their participation in the swap, and a second governance vote will set the mechanics — the snapshot date, the claims process and the shutdown schedule for the chain.

What did Proposal 68 actually decide?

The proposal commits the project to a full wind-down of the ZetaChain Layer 1 and the migration of ZETA to Solana. With 99.4% of votes cast in favor and 58% of eligible voting power participating, the outcome leaves little ambiguity about holder sentiment. The near-unanimous margin suggests large stakeholders coordinated around the conclusion that maintaining a dedicated chain no longer justified its operational cost relative to deploying on an established high-throughput network.

The approval does not trigger an immediate change. Governance has deliberately split the process into stages, with the exchange-confirmation requirement acting as a gate before the second vote can lock in timing and technical parameters.

Why does the swap depend on exchanges?

A token migration of this scale cannot succeed if a material share of the supply sits on venues that do not process the swap. Users who hold ZETA on exchanges are dependent on those platforms crediting the new Solana-based token; users who self-custody will presumably interact with a claims mechanism whose details the second vote will define.

Until exchanges confirm, the community cannot finalize the snapshot block that determines who is eligible for the new token, nor the deadline after which the original chain stops validating transactions. The staged design reduces the risk of a stranded-asset outcome, where the Layer 1 shuts down before custodians have committed to honoring balances.

What happens to the ZetaChain network?

The proposal's language points to a shutdown schedule to be set by the follow-on vote. Once that schedule is fixed, validators, bridge operators and node infrastructure providers face decommissioning, and any applications built natively on the chain will need to migrate or sunset. The second vote is effectively the last coordination point for users holding ZETA in wallets connected to the network's own tooling.

Operationally, a chain wind-down of this kind transfers the project's security assumptions, block production and liquidity venue from its own validator set to Solana's. That consolidation trades protocol sovereignty for access to a deeper liquidity environment and removes the fixed costs of running a Layer 1.

What comes next?

The immediate milestones are external: exchange confirmations, then the second governance vote covering the snapshot, claims and shutdown timeline. Holders should watch for the announcement of the second vote's timing, since the snapshot it sets will determine eligibility for the Solana-based replacement token.