ZetaChain shuts down legacy cross-chain services as part of AI pivot

ZetaChain has announced that it will be suspending all remaining cross-chain operations on June 30, cutting off bridge services across 10 blockchain networks as the project abandons its original interoperability mission to build what it calls a “private memory layer” for artificial intelligence.

The project initially published on its Notion page that it was winding down that service and gave users a 30-day window, which ends on June 30, to pull assets off the platform. It disabled deposits on June 1.

After the June 30 deadline, withdrawals for all ZRC20 tokens will be paused indefinitely, according to the announcement.

What networks will be losing cross-chain support?

ZetaChain is ending cross-chain observation for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Base, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Sui, and TON, according to the wind-down schedule. Once the cutoff hits, the protocol will no longer monitor or relay transactions across any of these chains.

CoinMarketCap data shows 11.9 million unique addresses and 241 million transactions on the chain. As of June 30, ZETA trades at roughly $0.036 with a market cap of about $52 million, near its all-time low of $0.032 recorded four days earlier.

ZetaChain moves on with Anuma

ZetaChain is redirecting resources toward Anuma, a consumer AI application that was launched publicly on April 27. 

The Anuma product that ZetaChain is pushing now is supposed to allow users carry context from encrypted conversation history and behavioral preferences across AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. That context is stored in a single, encrypted location.

According to ZetaChain, over 150,000 users are now interacting with AI products in its ecosystem.

ZetaChain is now merging into the AI lane, becoming a layer that manages memory, identity, permissions, and payments for AI agents across platforms. That pivot even came up in its wind-down notice, describing the transition as enabling “the next generation of user-owned memory, identity, permissions, payments, and agents.”

Did the April security incident contribute to ZetaChain’s transition?

The pivot comes after a rocky period for ZetaChain’s cross-chain infrastructure. In late April, an attacker exploited the project’s GatewayEVM contract and drained around $334,000 across transactions on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and BSC, according to a post-mortem.

ZetaChain said only internal team wallets were affected and no user funds were lost in the incident.

ZetaChain acknowledged that the vulnerability had been flagged through its bug bounty program before the attack, but was dismissed as expected behavior, and this brought some backlash to the platform for negligence.

The attacker lined up three separate non-critical design weaknesses, which when compounded together, allowed them to completely drain approved tokens.

ZetaChain paused cross-chain transactions on its mainnet to contain the breach and later disabled the gateway’s arbitrary call functionality. The project also replaced unlimited token approvals with exact-amount approvals in its deposit process.

What ZETA holders face now

Users who still hold ZRC20 tokens on ZetaChain have until 11:59 PM PST on June 30 to withdraw eligible assets, per the wind-down schedule. After that, withdrawals are suspended with no announced timeline for reopening.

The token itself has lost more than 98% from its all-time high of $2.85, set in February 2024, according to CoinMarketCap. There may be hopes that an AI pivot will reverse that trajectory; however, it depends on how much traction Anuma gains to justify an entirely new use case for the ZETA token, which itself depends on how much large-scale AI agent economies perform.

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