Harmony Puts Forward Plan to Shut Down Layer 1 and Migrate ONE to Ethereum

The sunsetting of its layer-1 blockchain and the migration of ONE to Ethereum were proposed by Harmony, weeks after an exploit led to plans to discard 109,000 transactions.

The Ethereum-compatible layer-1 network Harmony proposed the sunsetting of its blockchain and the migration of its native ONE token to Ethereum, seven years after launching its mainnet.

On Sunday, a final network snapshot was proposed by Harmony, along with the issuance of ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum and the migration of exchange listings. Options would be offered to validators to stop their nodes, continue as governors, or join its new AI-video initiative.

The proposal was characterized by Harmony as non-binding, while no specific timeline was provided regarding when the final block would be produced or whether the shutdown would be submitted to the validator-led governance process of the network.

Under Harmony’s published governance rules, proposals can be created by elected validators, whereas voting is handled by unelected validators, with voting power being determined by total stake. Participation by 51% of total stake weight and 66.7% support following a seven-day introduction and a 14-day vote are required for passage.

Under the proposal, all ONE balances will be recorded at the final block of the network, and new ERC-20 tokens will be airdropped to identical addresses on Ethereum. Wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts, and centralized exchanges will be captured by the snapshot, requiring no claims from users.

Multisig safes, liquidity pools, and onchain applications cannot be migrated, as stated by Harmony, which urged users to exit all smart contracts prior to Sept. 10. Validators may begin shutting down that same day, and a $1.372 million pool has been set aside to compensate those who stop on time, retain their stakes, and agree to serve as governors.

Harmony Proposal Comes Weeks After Major Exploit#

The proposal arrived less than four weeks after an exploit forged ONE tokens and prompted Harmony to plan a rollback that would erase over 109,000 transactions, marking a potential shift from repairing the network to terminating it as an independent blockchain.

On Aug. 12, Harmony stated that a rollback was being considered after reports indicated that an attacker had minted nearly 4 billion unauthorized ONE tokens, which equaled about 26% of the total supply. An external account claimed that roughly 2.8 billion tokens reached exchanges, but those figures had not been confirmed by Harmony at the time.

On Aug. 17, Harmony stated that a plan had been made to revert the blockchain to an Aug. 11 checkpoint, which would discard 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. Investigators had traced nearly all the forged tokens to wallets or service boundaries, according to the network, and collaboration with exchanges, bridges, and law enforcement was actively being pursued.