After nine years of running its own chain, Zilliqa is calling it. On Thursday (Nov. 5th), the ICO-era network admitted its standalone L1 “hasn’t worked” and said it’s relaunching as the Zilliqa Institutional Layer, an Ethereum L2 built for regulated institutions.

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What’s the Scoop?

• Verified wallets only: Per Zilliqa’s revamped site, the new L2 will settle to Ethereum mainnet, but the only wallets allowed to transact are those linked to a verified vLEI. That’s a cryptographic upgrade to the Legal Entity Identifier (a global ID standard run by GLEIF), letting software confirm which company is on the other side of a trade and who’s allowed to sign for it. Institutions get in first, with other users promised access later.

• Liechtenstein runs the show: LTIN, the Liechtenstein Trust Integrity Network, will operate the sequencer and hand out the vLEIs as it works toward accreditation as an official issuer. Zilliqa says state-owned Telecom Liechtenstein holds a majority of LTIN, and Crypto Briefing reports Zilliqa bought a stake in LTIN back in July.

• ZIL survives, details pending: ZIL stays the network’s only token, and holders don’t need to do anything for now. The team says it’s weighing a Canton-style minimum ZIL balance for institutions to join, though “nothing is decided yet.” The rollup stack, proof system, migration plan, and launch date are all still TBD, with a public FAQ on the way.

• A brutal October: CEO Alexander Zahnd resigned only nine days earlier, amid a string of exploits targeting its X-Bridge (still paused) and several PlunderSwap pools. In a reply today, Zilliqa said going it alone on security “costs more than a small network can carry.” ZIL is down ~11.5% over the past 24 hours, with its market cap now near $33M.