Harmony is considering an unprecedented move to shut down its blockchain and migrate the network’s ONE token to Ethereum, with developers arguing that protecting the seven-year-old chain has become increasingly difficult amid more advanced cyber threats.
The team said the growing capabilities of state-backed attackers and AI agents have changed the security landscape enough to make continued operation unsustainable.
“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 said in a Sunday post on X.
The proposed shutdown is voluntary and non-binding, meaning the plan could still be revised. Harmony has also not confirmed whether the decision will go through its existing governance process, in which elected validators submit proposals and voting power is determined by staked tokens.
Harmony’s Rise and Fall
Harmony once positioned itself as a fast, low-cost alternative to Ethereum and competed for attention with newer networks such as Solana.
The project attracted substantial capital during the 2021 crypto boom. ONE climbed to approximately $0.38 in October that year, while deposits on the network exceeded $1 billion by January 2022. DeFi Kingdoms alone accounted for about $747 million of those deposits.
Security problems later undermined the project’s growth.
In June 2022, Harmony’s Horizon bridge was hacked for almost $100 million. The FBI subsequently attributed the attack to North Korea-linked groups Lazarus Group and APT38.
The breach severely damaged sentiment around Harmony, and ONE eventually lost as much as 99% of its value from its 2021 peak.
The network encountered another major exploit on Aug. 11. An attacker took advantage of a flaw in Harmony’s cross-shard transaction verification process and created more than 3 trillion unauthorized ONE across six transactions.
Harmony responded by reversing the chain to a point before the exploit. The rollback permanently erased more than 109,000 transactions from the blockchain’s historical record, drawing criticism from parts of the crypto community.
ONE Moves to Ethereum
If the latest proposal goes ahead, Harmony will record all outstanding ONE balances in a final snapshot and issue equivalent ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.
The snapshot would account for tokens held in individual wallets, staking positions, validator rewards and centralized exchanges. Harmony says users would not have to manually claim the replacement assets.
The project plans to make the Ethereum contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts available for public review.
The proposed transition would also give ONE’s future emissions a completely different purpose.
ONE was initially created in part to reward validators for securing Harmony. Once the blockchain is retired, those emissions would instead be directed toward a project called the “Remix Economy for AI Video.”
Harmony describes the initiative as a subscription platform where creators can upload prompts and other reusable assets that people and AI agents can use to produce new videos.
Validators are scheduled to begin shutting down their nodes from 7 a.m. Pacific time on Sept. 10.
Harmony has earmarked $1.372 million for validators participating in the transition. The amount matches the network’s total validator rewards generated during the year preceding the August exploit.
Validators that shut down on schedule, sign an agreement, retain their stake and participate in governance for the new AI venture would be eligible for compensation.
ONE was trading at around $0.00073 on Monday, down nearly 4% over the previous 24 hours.
