Harmony, the Ethereum-compatible layer-1 blockchain, has proposed sunsetting its network and migrating its native ONE token to Ethereum, seven years after the launch of its mainnet. The move, if carried out, would make Harmony one of the more prominent layer-1 networks to wind down its own chain and relocate its token to an existing blockchain rather than continue operating independently.

On Sunday, Harmony put forward a plan to take a final network snapshot, issue ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum, and migrate exchange listings. Validators would be given options to shut down their nodes, continue serving as governors, or join the project's new AI-video initiative.

Harmony described the proposal as non-binding and did not specify when the final block would be produced, nor whether the shutdown would be submitted to the network's validator-led 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, following a seven-day introduction period and a 14-day vote.

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Token migration details

Under the proposal, all ONE balances would be recorded at the network's final block, and new ERC-20 tokens would be airdropped to the same addresses on Ethereum. The snapshot would cover wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts, and centralized exchanges, with no claims process required.

However, Harmony said multisig safes, liquidity pools, and on-chain applications cannot be migrated, and urged users to exit all smart contracts before Sept. 10. Validators may begin shutting down their nodes that day. A $1.372 million pool has been set aside to compensate validators that stop on time, retain their stakes, and agree to serve as governors.

Proposal comes weeks after an exploit

The proposal arrives less than four weeks after an exploit created forged ONE tokens and led Harmony to plan a rollback that would have wiped more than 109,000 transactions — a potential shift from repairing the network to ending it as an independent blockchain.

On Aug. 12, Harmony said it was considering a rollback after reports that an attacker had minted nearly 4 billion unauthorized ONE, equivalent to about 26% of the supply. An outside account claimed about 2.8 billion tokens reached exchanges, but Harmony had not confirmed those figures at the time.

On Aug. 17, Harmony said it planned to revert the blockchain to an Aug. 11 checkpoint, discarding 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. It said investigators had traced nearly all of the forged tokens to wallets or service boundaries and were working with exchanges, bridges, and law enforcement.

The exploit was not the network's first major security incident. In June 2022, an attacker stole roughly $100 million from Harmony's Horizon cross-chain bridge, a hack the project later linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group, and Harmony offered a bounty for the return of the funds. That history of security setbacks frames the current proposal, which would shift the token to Ethereum's more established infrastructure while the project pivots toward its AI-video initiative.

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