Zilliqa is accelerating the retirement of its legacy transaction environment following a critical signing flaw in its Ledger application, while two major South Korean exchanges have decided to delist ZIL after months of reviewing the incident. Upbit and Bithumb will terminate trading support even as Zilliqa moves legacy balances onto its unaffected EVM infrastructure.
According to Zilliqa’s official incident report, the vulnerability affected only legacy transactions signed through the Zilliqa Ledger app. A defect in nonce generation leaked information through public signatures, allowing private keys to be reconstructed from sufficiently exposed accounts. Zilliqa has confirmed at least 683.13 million ZIL in theft across 51 drained accounts, while 6,772 accounts were identified as exposed. Zilliqa EVM transactions were not affected.
The incident accelerated a transition that was already underway. Instead of restoring normal legacy transaction support, Zilliqa decided to retire the older non-EVM execution path and migrate remaining holders to Zilliqa EVM. The response is therefore a universal legacy migration rather than simply a recovery process for wallets confirmed as compromised.
Upbit and Bithumb Move to Delist ZIL
Zilliqa said it spent several months coordinating with South Korea’s five major exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Gopax and Korbit, while responding to questions from the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance. That engagement ultimately did not prevent Upbit and Bithumb from deciding to terminate ZIL trading support.
Bithumb said the information supplied by the Zilliqa Foundation was insufficient to resolve the reasons behind its investment-warning designation. The exchange will end ZIL trading on November 16 at 3 p.m. local time and ordinarily end withdrawal support on December 16. Zilliqa separately confirmed that both Upbit and Bithumb will support withdrawals through Zilliqa EVM, allowing exchange users to receive migrated ZIL without running the retail migration process themselves.
The episode highlights how a security failure can persist operationally even after its technical boundary has been identified. Wallet vulnerabilities do not necessarily imply a failure of the underlying blockchain, as another recent Ledger-related hardware incident demonstrated through a compromised distribution path. Likewise, investigations into weak mobile-wallet seed generation have shown that key handling can become the decisive security boundary while network consensus continues functioning normally.
Migration Replaces the Legacy Signing Environment
For self-custody holders, Zilliqa has released a zero-knowledge migration application that moves balances from zil1 legacy accounts to EVM-compatible 0x addresses. Security firm Hacken reviewed the system in September, covering its Groth16 circuit, key derivation, escrow contract and desktop client. The final audit recorded 20 findings, including three initially rated high severity, with no critical issues and remediation completed before release.
The tool supports both Ledger derivation and standard BIP-44 wallets. Seed material is processed locally to generate the ownership proof rather than being transmitted to Zilliqa, addressing the unusual problem created by exposed leaf keys: the legitimate holder must prove control of stronger upstream key material without relying on the compromised account key alone.
Centralized exchanges are being migrated separately through coordinated hard forks. Binance has confirmed a 1:1 migration from legacy ZIL to Zilliqa EVM and said spot, margin, futures and Earn services will remain unaffected during the process. Once Binance completes the migration, legacy-network deposits and withdrawals will no longer be supported.
Other blockchain migrations have moved toward EVM environments for developer compatibility and liquidity, including Horizen’s transition to an EVM-native architecture. Zilliqa’s circumstances are materially different: a pre-existing architectural transition became part of the containment strategy after a signing vulnerability made continued legacy support increasingly difficult to justify.
The Korean delistings show that successful technical migration does not automatically restore exchange confidence. Zilliqa can move balances, retire the vulnerable signing path and preserve ZIL on its EVM network, but those measures remain separate from the listing decisions individual exchanges make after their own risk reviews.
Natalie Pierce tracks the parts of crypto that move fast and rarely wait for everyone to catch up. From South Africa, she covers DeFi, AI crypto, hacks, airdrops, sentiment and emerging narratives, especially when user behavior and protocol risk start to overlap.
Her reporting is built for messy sectors. Natalie looks at incentives, reactions, security concerns, social momentum and early signs of traction without pretending every new trend is already proven. Her voice is clear and accessible, but careful enough for areas where excitement can outrun the facts very quickly.