Zilliqa said on Oct. 27 that Alexander Zahnd had stepped down as CEO of the layer-1 blockchain as the project continued investigating security incidents tied to X-Bridge, which remains suspended.
In a fuller update posted on Zilliqa’s Telegram channel, the company said Zahnd’s departure came at his own request. Until a permanent leadership team is in place, the board will oversee the company directly, supported by an unnamed outside firm advising on cybersecurity and governance. No successor has been announced.
X-Bridge remains offline during the investigation
According to the update, the incidents affected X-Bridge, Zilliqa’s cross-chain bridge, as well as ZRC2 proxy contracts used by some liquidity pools, including pools associated with PlunderSwap.
Zilliqa named four affected tokens: zUSDT, SEED, kUSD, and Zoge. It said native ZIL and the Zilliqa EVM network were not affected.
The company said the bridge would stay suspended and asked users to avoid both X-Bridge and the affected pools until further notice. Zilliqa also said it is replacing every operational key and is in contact with exchanges and law enforcement. It has not disclosed how much was lost.
On Oct. 25, Zilliqa said it had brought in an outside firm specializing in cybersecurity and AI-driven attacks to help with the investigation.
PlunderSwap says about $800,000 was stolen
PlunderSwap, a decentralized exchange on Zilliqa, said in a notice on its website that around $800,000 was stolen from X-Bridge.
It also said that zUSDC, zUSDT, zWBTC, and XCAD — assets that reached Zilliqa through the bridge — had lost their backing, and that those tokens had been removed from its token list.
Second CEO change in two years
Zahnd previously served as Zilliqa’s chief financial officer and was appointed interim CEO in May 2025, after Matt Dyer stepped down as CEO in April that year.
That earlier departure followed a separate X-Bridge exploit in February 2025. Zilliqa said a bug in a token manager contract allowed an attacker to withdraw about $42,000 in USDT.
In July, Zilliqa halted native transactions after a flaw in a Ledger app built by the project exposed private keys.
ZIL was little changed as of Oct. 28
According to CoinGecko data, ZIL traded at $0.001999 at 4:52 p.m. ET on Oct. 28, roughly flat over the past 24 hours.
Zilliqa also said it would brief strategic partners LTIN and Telecom Liechtenstein on business developments. The company has not said when X-Bridge will reopen or who will take over as permanent chief executive.