Zilliqa has lost its second chief executive since April 2025. Alexander Zahnd has stepped down as CEO of the layer-1 blockchain, the project said on X on Oct. 27, as it investigates security incidents that hit X-Bridge, which remains suspended.

Zahnd’s exit came “at his own request,” according to the full update on Zilliqa’s Telegram channel. The board is overseeing the company directly “until permanent leadership is appointed,” backed by an unnamed outside firm that advises on cybersecurity and governance. No successor has been named.

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What Zilliqa says was hit

According to the update, the incidents reached X-Bridge, Zilliqa’s cross-chain bridge, along with ZRC2 proxy contracts that some liquidity pools rely on, PlunderSwap’s among them. Zilliqa listed four affected tokens: zUSDT, SEED, kUSD and Zoge. “Native ZIL and the Zilliqa EVM network are not affected,” it said.

The bridge remains suspended, and Zilliqa asked users to stay away from it and from the affected pools “until further notice.” The company said it is replacing every operational key and is in contact with exchanges and law enforcement. It has not disclosed how much was lost.

PlunderSwap, a decentralized exchange on Zilliqa, said in a notice on its website that around $800,000 was stolen from X-Bridge. It said zUSDC, zUSDT, zWBTC and XCAD, which reached Zilliqa over the bridge, have lost their backing, and it has pulled them from its token list.

Zilliqa first said on Oct. 25 that it had hired an outside firm specializing in cybersecurity and AI-driven attacks to help investigate.

A second leadership change in two years

Zahnd, previously Zilliqa’s chief financial officer, was appointed interim CEO in May 2025, after Matt Dyer stepped down as CEO in April of that year. That departure followed a separate X-Bridge exploit in February 2025, in which a bug in a token manager contract let an attacker pull out about $42,000 in USDT, according to Zilliqa.

In July, Zilliqa halted native transactions after a flaw in a Ledger app it built exposed private keys.

ZIL traded at $0.001999 at 4:52 p.m. ET on Oct. 28, roughly flat over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.

Zilliqa said it would also brief its strategic partners LTIN and Telecom Liechtenstein on business developments. It has not said when X-Bridge will reopen or who will lead the company on a permanent basis.

Related Listen: Why Aave’s Unified Pool Turned a Bridge Hack Into $193M in Bad Debt