Harmony, an Ethereum-compatible layer-1 network, has proposed shutting down its blockchain and migrating its native ONE token to Ethereum, seven years after launching its mainnet.
On Sunday, Harmony published a non-binding proposal to take a final network snapshot, issue ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum, and migrate exchange listings. The proposal does not specify when the final block would be produced or whether the shutdown would be submitted to the network's validator-led governance process.
Migration Details
Under the proposal, all ONE balances would be recorded at the network's final block and new ERC-20 tokens airdropped to the same addresses on Ethereum. The snapshot would cover wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts, and centralized exchanges, with no claims required.
Harmony warned that multisig safes, liquidity pools, and onchain applications cannot be migrated, urging users to exit all smart contracts before September 10. Validators may begin shutting down that day, with a $1.372 million pool set aside to compensate those that stop on time, retain their stakes, and agree to serve as governors.
Validators would be offered options to stop their nodes, continue as governors, or join Harmony's new AI-video initiative.
Governance Process
Under Harmony's published governance rules, elected validators can create proposals, while unelected validators may vote, with voting power based on total stake. Passage requires 51% of total stake weight to participate and 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction and 14-day vote.
Recent Exploit Prompts Shift
The proposal comes less than four weeks after an exploit created forged ONE tokens and led Harmony to plan a rollback that would wipe more than 109,000 transactions. On August 12, Harmony reported that an attacker had minted nearly 4 billion unauthorized ONE tokens, equivalent to approximately 26% of the supply. An outside account claimed about 2.8 billion tokens reached exchanges, though Harmony had not confirmed the figures at the time.
On August 17, Harmony announced plans to revert the blockchain to an August 11 checkpoint, discarding 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. The network said investigators had traced nearly all the forged tokens to wallets or service boundaries and were working with exchanges, bridges, and law enforcement.
