Polygon developers are proposing a hard fork of the Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mainnet to recover stolen tokens linked to separate security incidents at Binance and Polymarket. The target is approximately 70.49 million native POL, worth around $7 million, held in five attacker-controlled addresses. The tokens are already frozen, and the fork would transfer them back to their rightful owners.
What the proposal would do
The Polygon Improvement Proposal (PIP) was introduced on November 4, 2026, by Parvez03, a member of the Polygon Labs validator support team. It describes an exceptional state change to the network’s ledger rather than a routine upgrade.
The stolen funds trace back to two incidents on October 29 and 30. About 23.86 million POL ended up across four addresses connected to the Polymarket breach. Another roughly 46.63 million POL sits in a single address linked to the Binance incident.
Under the proposal, all five addresses would have their balances set to zero. Matching amounts would then be credited to verified recovery accounts set up for each victim. The total supply of POL would not change: no new tokens would be minted, and none would be burned. The coins would simply change hands from the attackers back to the victims.
Frozen, but not finished
Polygon’s block producers have already added the five addresses to a transaction denylist, which blocks the funds from moving. According to the proposal’s backers, the attackers continue trying to push the assets out through high-fee transactions and alleged bribery of validators.
Developer teams have stressed that the measure is extraordinary and not meant to set a precedent for future incidents. The scope is also narrow: the recovery covers only the native POL still locked on Polygon PoS. Other tokens involved in the incidents, including USDT, fall outside this proposal.
Polymarket and Binance have already reimbursed most affected users on their own. The fork is therefore less about making individual users whole and more about recovering the remaining stolen assets that are stuck on-chain.
Timeline and next steps
The community is set to discuss the PIP at the Protocol Governance Call on November 5, 2026, at 14:30 UTC. If approved, client development and validation on the Amoy testnet are expected to take around two weeks before the change could go live on mainnet.
Why a reversal is significant
Immutability is a core selling point of public blockchains: once a transaction is confirmed, it is supposed to stay confirmed. Polygon’s approach routes the change through its formal governance process, labels it exceptional, and keeps total supply untouched, signaling a carefully bounded intervention rather than a new habit.
Implications for POL holders and the wider market
The supply-neutral design removes one obvious market concern. Because no POL is created or destroyed, the fork itself should not dilute existing holders. The tokens returning to victims were already part of the circulating picture.
For Binance and Polymarket, recovery would offset funds they have largely already covered out of pocket for users. Recovering the assets on-chain could ease the cost of those reimbursements.
