Written by: Xiao Bing

Governance proposal number 68 of ZetaChain was passed on September 20 with a support rate of 99.4%. The voting rate was 58%, far exceeding the legal threshold of 40%. Against votes and abstentions each accounted for 0.3%.

The content of the proposal can be summarized in one sentence: Shut down your own chain and move to Solana.

This is a rare case in the crypto industry, where a Cosmos-based L1 blockchain that raised 27 million dollars and operated for three years was decided by community vote to abandon its own block space, validator pool, and gas economy, converting its native token 1:1 into Solana's SPL asset, and then redefining the existence of the token around an AI application called Anuma.

The current price of ZETA is about $0.03, down 99% from the historical high of $2.85 in February 2024. The market cap is about 50 million dollars, and FDV is about 65 million dollars.

The support rate of 99.4% indicates that the community has reached a consensus; what is the content of this consensus?

From Cross-Chain Infrastructure to AI Application: A Complete Identity Rewrite

ZetaChain's initial positioning was "full-chain interoperability," an L1 that allows smart contracts to read and write data from multiple chains. In 2023, when it raised 27 million dollars, the cross-chain narrative was at its peak. LayerZero, Wormhole, and Axelar were competing for the same market.

The problem is that ZetaChain did not win this war. The competition for cross-chain bridges and interoperability protocols is extremely brutal; the winner-takes-all network effect makes the gap between second and tenth place negligible. ZetaChain's L1 has never gained enough developers and application deployments to prove that it needs an independent chain.

In February 2026, the team launched Anuma, a "private AI" application. Anuma's selling point is that users have their own memory layer (Private Memory Layer), with the conversation history and preference data of the AI assistant encrypted and stored, allowing users to migrate their context between different AI models without giving data to any AI company.

According to official data, Anuma already has over 300,000 users and has processed over 1 million AI requests.

The team's judgement is: The cost and complexity of operating an independent L1 far exceed the infrastructure support required for Anuma. Solana's high-performance execution environment and mature developer toolchain can better serve Anuma's needs.

In the team's own words: “What Solana's AI infrastructure stack lacks is the application layer, an application that people use every day, with memories that belong to them, capable of migrating across models and applications.”

The Identity of the Token is Also Being Rewritten

Before and after the migration, the value capture logic of the ZETA token underwent fundamental changes.

Before migration (L1 native token):

• Gas fees: All transactions on ZetaChain use ZETA to pay fees
• Staking: Validators and delegators stake ZETA to ensure network security and earn staking rewards
• Cross-chain value transfer: ZETA serves as the native asset for cross-chain messaging

After migration (Solana SPL asset):

• Anuma usage rights: Locking 100,000 ZETA can unlock Anuma Pro
• Service quota: The amount of locked ZETA determines the AI service quota available for use
• Gas fees reduced to zero: Transaction fees will be paid in SOL
• Validation reduced to zero: Network security will be provided by Solana validators

In simple terms, ZETA has transformed from "fuel to maintain a chain's operation" to "a ticket to use an AI application."

The key question for this transformation is: Which value capture is stronger?

The Gas + staking model of L1 has one advantage: the demand is structural; as long as the chain is still running, every transaction must consume ZETA. However, the on-chain activity of ZetaChain has never reached a level to generate meaningful income from this model.

The token locking model of AI applications has a different advantage: if Anuma really becomes a widely used AI product, the demand for locked tokens will grow with user growth, removing a large amount of ZETA from circulation. But the premise is that Anuma can convert enough paying users from its 300,000 free users.

300,000 Users and 1 Million Requests

300,000 users and 1 million AI requests sound good, but they need to be looked at in detail.

Usage does not equal willingness to pay. Currently, Anuma's user growth primarily comes from the free tier. Locking 100,000 ZETA (about $3,000) to unlock the Pro version is not a high threshold at the current price, but for an AI assistant application, whether users are willing to lock assets for it depends on Anuma's competitive differentiation compared to products like ChatGPT and Claude. The "private memory layer" is a good concept, but there is currently no evidence that consumers are willing to pay a premium for AI privacy.

The value of 1 million requests. It is unclear how many of these 1 million requests come from paying users (Pro locked token users) and how many come from free users. If the vast majority are from the free tier, then this usage has limited contribution to the demand for ZETA locking.

300,000 is a start, but far from a barrier. In the race for AI applications, 300,000 users is a seed size. ChatGPT has hundreds of millions of users, and Perplexity has tens of millions. For Anuma to establish itself in this battlefield, it needs "people to rely on it," not just "people to use it."

Who Benefits, Who Loses

The beneficiary is undoubtedly Solana.

Every project that migrates from another ecosystem to Solana increases Solana's user base, on-chain activity, and narrative weight. If ZetaChain's 300,000 Anuma users migrate smoothly, it will directly increase Solana's DAU.

Next are ZETA holders (if Anuma is successful). If Anuma achieves substantial user growth and paying conversion on Solana, the demand for locked tokens will drive up the price of ZETA. The 1:1 conversion means holders will not be diluted during the migration.

The ones who suffer are ZetaChain validators. They invested hardware and staking capital to operate nodes; when the chain shuts down, these investments become sunk costs. Although validators can continue to stake until Proposal 2 passes, the outcome has already been determined.

There are also ecological projects that rely on ZetaChain's cross-chain functionality. Any applications that have deployed cross-chain logic on ZetaChain will need to find alternatives or stop operating.

Industry Signal: The Great Cleanup of L1 is Accelerating

ZetaChain is not an isolated case.

If we place it on the 2026 L1/L2 shutdown list, Linera, which a16z invested in, shut down in September (having raised only 848,000 dollars), Entropy shut down in January, and Legend shut down in July, a trend becomes very clear: The market is no longer willing to pay a premium for the fact of “having your own chain.”

During the funding cycle of 2021-2022, "We want to create an L1/L2" was the most common startup narrative. Every team thought they needed a chain to carry their vision. The reality three years later is that most chains have never garnered enough developers and users to prove the rationale for independent operation. The cost of maintaining a chain (validator incentives, security audits, infrastructure operations) is a tangible cash drain, and chains without transaction volume cannot generate cash revenue.

ZetaChain's approach is at least more constructive than simply shutting down; it didn't have to exit like Linera after running out of funds but proactively transformed when there were still 300,000 users and a growing AI product. The 99.4% approval rate indicates that the community recognized this judgement.

But this also raises a sharp question: if a chain that raised 27 million dollars ultimately concludes that "operating its own chain is not worthwhile," how many other chains are consuming capital to maintain block space that no one really needs?

ZetaChain provides an answer: Not every chain is worth surviving. What matters is what runs on the chain, the chain itself is not important.