Harmony Proposes Shutting Down Layer 1, Migrating ONE Token to Ethereum
TLDR
- Harmony proposed shutting down its layer-1 blockchain and migrating its native ONE token to Ethereum.
- The move comes weeks after an exploit led to a rollback that discarded over 109,000 transactions.
- Validators can stop their nodes starting Sept. 10, with a $1.372 million pool set aside for those who transition smoothly.
- Harmony plans to pivot into an AI video “remix economy” business using the migrated token.
- Users must exit all smart contracts before Sept. 10, since multisig safes and liquidity pools cannot be migrated.
Harmony has proposed sunsetting its layer-1 blockchain and moving its native ONE token to Ethereum. The announcement came seven years after the network’s mainnet first launched.
The proposal was shared on X on Sunday. Harmony said it would take a final network snapshot, issue ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum, and migrate exchange listings.
Harmony described the plan as non-binding. It did not say when the final block would be produced or whether the shutdown would go through the network’s validator-led governance process.
Under Harmony’s existing governance rules, elected validators can create proposals. Unelected validators can vote, with voting power based on total stake. Passing a proposal requires 51% of total stake weight to participate and 66.7% support after a voting period.
Why Harmony Is Shutting Down
Harmony said security threats played a role in the decision. “The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great,” the team wrote in its announcement.
“Since our mainnet launch in 2019, our community has been resilient through attacks and changes, but it is time to fully sunset the Harmony network,” Harmony added.
The team said validators would be offered new roles in a proposed AI video initiative. This new venture would center on a small group of AI video creators who publish open prompts and assets.
Fans could then fork, or “remix,” those originals. AI agents would turn each fork into more video clips. Harmony said the plan could generate advertising revenue from a large user base.
How the ONE Token Migration Would Work
Under the plan, all ONE balances would be recorded at the network’s final block. New ERC-20 tokens would then be airdropped to the same wallet addresses on Ethereum.
The snapshot would cover wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts, and centralized exchanges. Harmony said no action or claim would be required from holders.
Multisig safes, liquidity pools, and onchain applications cannot be migrated, though. Harmony urged users to exit all smart contracts before Sept. 10.
Validators can begin shutting down their nodes on Sept. 10. Harmony set aside $1.372 million to compensate validators who stop on time, keep their stakes, and agree to serve as governors in the new initiative.
The token’s total supply and emission rate will stay the same. Newly issued tokens will go toward funding the AI video initiative, Harmony said. ONE was trading near $0.00073 as of Sunday.
This proposal follows a security incident that took place less than four weeks earlier. On Aug. 12, Harmony said it was looking into a rollback after reports that an attacker minted nearly 4 billion unauthorized ONE tokens.
A later review by Harmony found the attacker had actually minted more than 3 trillion ONE tokens across six transactions. An outside account estimated that about 2.8 billion tokens had reached exchanges.
The exploit stemmed from a flaw in Harmony’s cross-shard receipt verification system. This flaw let valid receipts get processed multiple times, letting the attacker mint new tokens without a matching debit elsewhere.
On Aug. 17, Harmony said it would revert the blockchain to an Aug. 11 checkpoint. That rollback discarded 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions.
This was not Harmony’s first major security incident. In June 2022, its Horizon cross-chain bridge was exploited, with attackers stealing crypto assets worth close to $100 million.
The FBI later attributed that 2022 bridge attack to North Korean state-backed hacking groups Lazarus Group and APT 38.
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