The short version
- ZetaChain will halt its chain at block 20,755,000, around December 9, and move ZETA 1:1 to Solana, with claims on its own portal from that day.
- Zilliqa is turning its Layer 1 into an Ethereum layer 2 for regulated institutions after three hacks in four months; ZIL stays the token, with no date yet.
- Next: the ZetaChain vote closes at 16:12 UTC on Saturday, November 7, with about 83% of staked ZETA already voting yes.
Two altcoin chains decided in the same week that running their own blockchain no longer adds up. ZetaChain plans to stop producing blocks on December 9 and move ZETA to Solana one for one, and Zilliqa says its Layer 1 will turn into an Ethereum layer 2 built for regulated institutions.
Neither token has bounced much on the news. ZETA trades at $0.0357 at the time of writing, down 4% on the day and 98.7% below its February 2024 high of $2.85. ZIL sits at $0.0018, up 3% on the day but down 47% in a month.
The team put the plan to a vote on Wednesday:
On Dec 9, $ZETA becomes a native Solana token and ZetaLabs launches: private AI on Solana, with ZETA as the token behind it.
Governance Proposal 2 is live on ZetaHub. It sets the mechanism, the dates and the holder protections.
Voting runs
72 hours. Nothing moves until it
What Happens When ZetaChain Halts on December 9?
The chain stops at block 20,755,000, and holders claim the same amount of ZETA as a Solana token. Proposal 70 sets out the steps:
- Snapshot: every balance at that block is recorded, including staked ZETA, unbonding ZETA and unclaimed rewards, so nobody has to unstake.
- Mint: the same total is minted on Solana as a standard SPL token with no freeze authority, and the right to mint more is revoked once the claim vault is funded.
- Claim: from December 9, holders sign a message on hub.zetachain.com/migrate naming a Solana wallet. No fee, no SOL needed, minimum 10 ZETA.
- Burn: about 55 million ZETA of validator rewards that were never paid out get burned in 12 monthly batches through 2027.
Exchanges convert customer balances on their own dates, and the 600 million ZETA on Ethereum as an ERC-20 stay as they are. Wrapped ZETA and pool positions can’t be claimed, so unwrap and exit pools before the snapshot.
Is the vote a done deal? Almost. When we checked the chain, 312.2 million ZETA had voted yes and 420.5 ZETA had voted no, about 83% of all staked ZETA and well past the 40% quorum. Voting closes at 16:12 UTC on Saturday, November 7. The direction was settled in September, when Proposal 68 passed with 99.44%.
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Why Zilliqa Is Giving Up Its Own Chain
Zilliqa is blunt about it. “An independent L1 no longer works,” the team writes on the page explaining the move, pointing to dried-up funding for standalone chains, usage that never got big enough, and a string of hacks.
Those hacks came close together, according to Zilliqa’s incident page:
- July: a flaw in the Zilliqa Ledger app could expose private keys, so legacy transactions were paused.
- Early October: a compromised key was used to drain the X-Bridge between Zilliqa and Ethereum. The bridge is still paused.
- October 22–23: an attacker minted unbacked ZRC-2 tokens and sold them into PlunderSwap pools for ZIL.
CEO Alexander Zahnd stepped down on October 27, and the board took over day-to-day oversight. A week later, Zilliqa replaced its homepage with the new plan.
Zilliqa, Previously Backed by Polychain Capital, Announces Pivot from Standalone Layer 1 to Ethereum L2
Zilliqa announced that it will transition from a standalone Layer 1 to an Ethereum Layer 2 called the Zilliqa Institutional Layer (ZIL), targeting regulated institutions.
The new network is called the Zilliqa Institutional Layer. Only wallets whitelisted through a vLEI, the digital form of the Legal Entity Identifier that banks and funds already use, can transact. LTIN, a state-backed network in Liechtenstein, issues those IDs and runs the sequencer, and transaction batches settle on Ethereum.
ZIL stays the only token, and Zilliqa says holders don’t need to do anything today. What it hasn’t published yet is the part holders care about most: a date, and what the move means for stakers and exchanges.
SIDE TRAIL: Solana dApp Store Featured a Fake SKR Claim App for an Hour
Two Chains, One Pattern
The logic behind both moves is the same, and it goes like this:
- A small chain has to pay validators to keep it secure.
- With few users, fees don’t cover that, so the chain pays in new tokens instead. The ZETA network was paying out about 152,000 new ZETA a day.
- New tokens add selling pressure, and a falling token makes the next round of security even more expensive.
Plugging into Solana or Ethereum hands that security bill to a much bigger network. The team behind ZETA is also tying the token to ZetaLabs, a private AI app on Solana, while Zilliqa is betting on banks and funds that need to know who they trade with.
TRAIL MAP: Crypto Market Cap and Supply Explained
The next five weeks are also prime time for fake claim sites. The ZETA Solana migration portal only asks for a signature, never a transaction and never a seed phrase, according to the proposal, and Zilliqa says any swap will be announced on zilliqa.com first. If a “migration” link arrives in a DM, it isn’t one.
ZetaChain’s last block, number 20,755,000, is due around December 9.
Teddy has been trading crypto since 2016. The focus is altcoins and EMA setups: finding coins sitting on key levels, waiting for support to hold or a range to be reclaimed, and trading the move from there. Bitcoin sets the tone, but the opportunities are usually in the alts.
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