CryptoSlate
Harmony is proposing to permanently shut down its independent blockchain on Sept. 6 and migrate its ONE token to Ethereum, reversing course less than three weeks after a controversial rollback restored operations following a major exploit. Under the plan, a final-block snapshot would distribute new ONE tokens to the same wallet addresses on Ethereum, with delegated stakes and unclaimed rewards flowing into individual governor vaults, while token supply and emissions remain unchanged.
Why it matters
The reversal reframes Harmony's late-August rollback as a temporary bridge rather than a recovery. On Aug. 17, the project explicitly rejected migration as too disruptive; four days later it rolled back the chain, discarding more than 109,000 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions from its shard-0 archive. By September, it was preparing to retire the infrastructure it had just restored.
The Aug. 11 exploit that forced the rollback allowed attackers to reuse cross-shard receipts and mint tokens without corresponding debits. Harmony initially reported 4 billion unauthorized ONE; its broader reconstruction later placed the figure at roughly 3.01 trillion ONE across six forged transactions. The incident followed the June 2022 Horizon bridge drain of nearly $100 million, which the FBI attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group. "The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great," Harmony said in the new proposal.
Market impact
ONE trades at $0.0007122, with a market value near $10.75 million, roughly 99% below its peak. Smart contracts, liquidity pools, and multisig safes will not migrate automatically, and Harmony is urging users to exit contracts before Sept. 10, with validators permitted to begin shutting down from 7 a.m. Pacific that day. A proposed $1.37 million compensation pool would pay governors and delegators over four quarters, while future ONE emissions would be redirected toward Harmony's AI-video initiative, severing the token's economics from the chain it was built to secure. The proposal remains non-binding, and the final block and airdrop date have not been disclosed.
Frequently asked questions
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Why is Harmony shutting down its own blockchain?
The Sept. 6 proposal would retire Harmony's independent network and migrate the ONE token to Ethereum via a snapshot and airdrop. The project said the threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great after a second major exploit.
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What happened in the Aug. 11 Harmony exploit?
Attackers reused cross-shard receipts to mint tokens without corresponding debits. Harmony initially reported 4 billion unauthorized ONE; a later reconstruction placed the figure at roughly 3.01 trillion ONE across six forged transactions.
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Did Harmony already do a chain rollback?
Yes. On Aug. 21 Harmony rolled back the chain, discarding more than 109,000 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions from its shard-0 archive. The Sept. 6 shutdown proposal reverses that recovery less than three weeks later.
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Will smart contracts and liquidity move to Ethereum automatically?
No. Smart contracts, liquidity pools, and multisig safes will not migrate automatically. Harmony is urging users to exit contracts before Sept. 10, with validators permitted to begin shutting down from 7 a.m. Pacific that day.
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What is ONE trading at, and what was the 2022 Horizon bridge attack?
ONE trades at $0.0007122 with a market value near $10.75 million, roughly 99% below its peak. In June 2022, Harmony's Horizon bridge was drained of nearly $100 million in an attack the FBI attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group.
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