Harmony developers are weighing a plan to permanently close the network and move its ONE token to Ethereum, arguing that defending the blockchain against increasingly sophisticated threats is no longer practical.
The team pointed to the growing capabilities of state-backed hackers and AI agents as a major reason for the proposed shutdown. Harmony said the community has managed to withstand attacks and other challenges since the mainnet went live in 2019, but believes it is now time to bring the blockchain to an end.
The proposal remains non-binding, and Harmony warned that the details could change. The project has yet to clarify whether the plan will be submitted through its regular governance system, where elected validators submit proposals and voting power is based on staked tokens.
Harmony’s Journey From Ethereum Challenger
Harmony once attracted considerable attention as a high-speed, low-cost blockchain designed to compete with Ethereum and emerging networks such as Solana.
During the 2021 crypto boom, ONE climbed to roughly $0.38 in October. The network had accumulated more than $1 billion in deposits by January 2022, including approximately $747 million tied to the DeFi Kingdoms game.
A series of security incidents later changed the project’s trajectory.
Harmony’s Horizon bridge was exploited in June 2022, resulting in the theft of nearly $100 million. The FBI later attributed the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group and APT38.
The incident dealt a major blow to confidence in the project, while ONE subsequently plunged as much as 99% from its record high.
Another exploit hit the network on Aug. 11. The attacker exploited a weakness in Harmony’s system for verifying transactions between shards, which are separate parallel sections of the blockchain.
More than 3 trillion unauthorized ONE tokens were created through six transactions.
In response, Harmony rolled the blockchain back to a point before the attack. The decision permanently removed more than 109,000 transactions from the network’s history and sparked controversy within the crypto community.
What Happens to ONE?
If approved, the shutdown plan would begin with a final snapshot of all ONE balances. Harmony would then create equivalent ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum and distribute them to the corresponding wallet addresses.
The snapshot would include tokens held in regular wallets, staking accounts, validator rewards and centralized exchanges.
Harmony says holders will not have to manually claim their replacement tokens. The project intends to publish the Ethereum contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts so the community can examine the process.
The proposal also changes the intended use of ONE emissions.
ONE was originally created partly to compensate validators for helping secure Harmony’s blockchain. Following the proposed shutdown, future emissions would instead support what Harmony calls the “Remix Economy for AI Video.”
The initiative is envisioned as a subscription-based service where creators can share prompts and other reusable digital assets. Those resources could then be used by people and AI agents to generate new video content.
Harmony said validators can start shutting down their nodes at 7 a.m. Pacific time on Sept. 10.
The project has reserved $1.372 million to compensate participating validators, an amount equal to the total validator rewards generated during the year preceding the August exploit.
Validators would qualify for the compensation by shutting down their nodes on time, signing an agreement, retaining their stake and taking part in governance of the new AI-focused venture.
ONE was trading near $0.00073 on Monday, down almost 4% over the previous 24 hours.
