55 Million ZETA to Be Burned: ZetaChain Is Still Delivering After Announcing Shutdown
Original ｜Odaily（@OdailyChina）
Author｜Golem（@web3_golem）
The date and specific mechanism for ZETA's migration to Solana have finally been confirmed. On November 7, the ZetaChain community passed its second governance proposal on the ZETA migration to Solana with 100% of the vote in favor.
The proposal states that the ZetaChain L1 will officially cease operations at block height 20,755,000 (expected around December 9, 2026), and staking rewards will stop at the same snapshot height. ZetaScan will remain available and provide a read-only RPC archive node running until October 31, 2027.
On the same day, users can claim ZETA on Solana 1:1 on ZetaHub, with no deadline and no fees (including SOL). Migration is completed with just a single signature. ZETA balances held on exchanges will be converted by the exchanges themselves, requiring no action from users.
At the same time, on December 9, ZetaLabs, ZetaChain's private AI product focused on the crypto space, will also go live.
ZetaLabs extends ZetaChain's interoperability philosophy into the AI realm. While keeping user data encrypted, it integrates large AI models, contextual memory, agent payments, and real-time market data sources into a single platform. According to official disclosures, more than 120,000 users have already joined the waitlist, reflecting the community's anticipation for the product.
Odaily has previously analyzed why shutting down the L1 would be a positive for ZetaChain （related reading: “Why Would Shutting Down the L1 Be a Positive for ZetaChain？”）. With the improvement in ZETA's tokenomics now compounded by the launch of the new product ZetaLabs, the transformed ZetaChain can no longer be ignored by the market.
ZETA Turns Deflationary as Value Capture Logic Upgrades from “Gas” to “Token”
55 Million ZETA to Be Burned; Team Pledges No Sales of Newly Unlocked Tokens in 2027
According to the second governance proposal on the ZETA migration to Solana, the total supply of ZETA will decrease after the migration is complete, with approximately 55 million ZETA burned from the 2.1 billion base.
The burn comes from the validator incentive allocation (10% of total supply, or 210 million ZETA). Because the ZetaChain L1 will be completely shut down, there will no longer be incentives for network validators. By the time the ZetaChain L1 officially ceases operations, approximately 155 million validator tokens will have been issued, so the remaining 55 million unissued ZETA will be burned.
After migration, these 55 million ZETA will be deposited into a Solana burn reserve controlled by the ZetaChain Foundation and burned monthly throughout 2027, at one-twelfth per month, or roughly 4.6 million ZETA, on fixed burn dates. By the end of 2027, ZETA's total supply will stand at 2.045 billion (initial supply minus the burn amount), meaning that starting in 2027, ZETA will become a deflationary token.
At the same time, according to ZetaChain's token unlock schedule at its 2024 TGE, all ZETA allocations for core contributors and investors (totaling 44.91 million tokens) will be fully unlocked by January 1, 2027.
ZETA Token Unlock Schedule
In addition, ZetaChain has officially pledged not to sell any newly unlocked ZETA from the Foundation (unlock allocations from the user growth pool, ecosystem growth fund, protocol treasury, and liquidity incentives) throughout 2027, further reducing ZETA's circulating supply in the market.
From Gas Value to Token Value
After the migration is complete, ZETA's token utility will also change significantly.
Previously, ZETA existed as the gas fee for the ZetaChain L1 network, capturing the value of network activity and ecosystem development on ZetaChain L1, and relying solely on staking incentives to reduce market selling pressure. The fragility of this value capture logic lies in the fact that once network activity or the ecosystem declines, users' willingness to hold ZETA drops, causing the token price to fall, which in turn reduces investors' willingness to stake, trapping ZETA's value in a “vicious cycle.”
After the migration, this situation will change. ZETA's value capture logic will upgrade from “blockchain gas” to an “AI product token” with real utility value.
Starting in Q1 2027, users can lock ZETA to access ZetaLabs Premium at no cost, while ZETA remains theirs; in addition to supporting USDC stablecoin and credit card purchases of AI credits, ZetaLabs will also allow users to pay with ZETA tokens; meanwhile, ZETA will continue to serve as ZetaLabs' governance token, with users voting with ZETA to decide which markets, data sources, and AI models ZetaLabs will support in the future.
In summary, ZETA will have three utility dimensions going forward: AI membership subscriptions, token purchases, and project governance. To access more advanced AI features, users will naturally develop real demand to lock and purchase ZETA, thereby reducing ZETA's circulating supply in the market and adding some genuine buy-side demand.
Of course, the foundation of this new positive value cycle for ZETA is users' willingness to lock or spend ZETA to use ZetaLabs.
ZetaLabs: A Private AI Assistant Built for Crypto Users
Today, the crypto space is riding a wave of AI Agent adoption, yet a considerable gap remains between ordinary AI products and the actual needs of crypto users.
For example, AI cannot access real-time market data in a timely manner, struggles to understand users' past on-chain activity, and cannot directly connect to the various services in the crypto ecosystem. Users often have to switch repeatedly between market data platforms, block explorers, AI chatbots, and various trading tools.
ZetaLabs was created precisely to change this.
ZetaLabs is a private AI application launched by ZetaChain on Solana, built specifically for crypto users. In addition to integrating multiple large AI models and real-time market data, its biggest feature is connecting users' private memory and on-chain behavior with market information, enabling AI to not just answer questions but truly understand the needs of crypto users.
ZetaLabs has better crypto compatibility and aligns more closely with crypto users' habits. More than 120,000 users have already joined the ZetaLabs waitlist, and once ZetaLabs officially launches, it is sure to deliver impressive results.
Own Your Context Like You Own Your Wallet
Privacy is the foundation of ZetaLabs.
Most AI products on the market today send users' contextual memory to large model providers, meaning users do not truly own their “memory.” For crypto users in particular, their wallet addresses, asset holdings, and investment strategies are at risk of being exposed.
Leveraging ZetaChain's encrypted memory technology, ZetaLabs encrypts users' chat histories, research, and contextual memory, and even ZetaChain itself cannot read this information. When conversing with large AI models, the model only receives the minimum information needed to answer the question and cannot access all of the user's history.
ZetaLabs also inherits ZetaChain's interoperability philosophy, turning users' contextual memory into an asset they can take with them at any time. No AI platform should have the right to revoke, censor, or seize a user's contextual memory. ZetaLabs allows users to transfer the same encrypted memory between AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok without leaking any private information.
ZetaLabs' memory is not limited to chat records between users and AI. ZetaLabs also features a Bloom function that can distill users' on-chain activity records into private memory, encrypted by the users themselves. This means users' on-chain activities are no longer just scattered transaction records across different block explorers, but can become important context for AI to understand the user.
For crypto users, whether it's which projects they've participated in, what on-chain operations they've performed, or their long-formed trading habits, all of this can be captured through Bloom. AI can therefore understand questions in the context of users' own historical activity, rather than starting from scratch with every conversation.
Crypto Radar Delivers Real-Time Personalized Information
Another major pain point for crypto users using ordinary AI is that data tends to be somewhat delayed and inaccurate, seriously affecting investment decisions. On ZetaLabs, users can ask AI questions about cryptocurrencies, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, stocks, and commodities in plain language, and the AI will answer using real-time market data.
ZetaLabs also comes with a built-in crypto radar that provides real-time, personalized market information based on users' contextual memory, helping users filter out content relevant to their areas of interest from the vast sea of market information.
This feature is not simply aggregating market news onto a single page, but rather attempts to have AI provide more targeted market information based on users' areas of interest and historical context. While a general-purpose AI Agent could also accomplish this task, it would still require significant time, tokens, and data for training, posing considerable difficulty for ordinary crypto users.
At the same time, ZetaLabs supports the x402 protocol, making it easy to integrate with other AI Agents, automatically purchasing on-chain micropayment services on demand, and calling data, APIs, and related capabilities provided by other Agents or service providers.
ZetaChain's Positive Catalysts Will Materialize in 30 Days
On December 9, ZetaLabs will officially launch with the above debut features. And in Q1 2027, according to the official roadmap, ZetaLabs will receive further upgrades, such as the Premium version publishing in-depth research reports on specific markets, the ability to send any on-chain transaction record to the AI and receive the most concise analytical description, the addition of tokenized stocks and market sentiment analysis, linking personal contextual memory to more applications, and exploring AI quantitative strategies……
In 30 days, ZETA's new tokenomics and brand-new product narrative will enter the delivery phase. From connecting chains to chains in the past, to connecting AI today, the ZetaChain story continues.
