Polygon has put forward a major network upgrade that could return roughly 70.49 million frozen POL tokens—valued at about $6.5 million—to Binance and Polymarket. The funds have been locked in five attacker-controlled wallets since separate security breaches hit the two companies in late October. POL is Polygon's native token, used for staking and paying transaction fees on its Proof-of-Stake network.

A proposal published on November 4 seeks approval for a coordinated hard fork of the Polygon Proof-of-Stake network. A hard fork is a breaking network upgrade: block producers, node operators, and infrastructure providers must adopt the new software in unison, since a partial rollout could split the chain into two incompatible versions. If adopted, the upgrade would move the stolen cryptocurrency into verified recovery wallets without expanding the total POL supply.

Targeted Wallets and Recovery Mechanics

According to the recovery proposal, four of the wallets are connected to the Polymarket security incident, containing approximately 23.86 million POL, while the remaining Binance-linked address holds about 46.63 million tokens. Both companies experienced security incidents between October 29 and October 30. Following their requests, Polygon block producers restricted transactions from the identified attacker addresses.

Those restrictions, however, only prevent the movement of funds; they cannot restore ownership or transfer the frozen assets back to the affected companies. The proposed hard fork addresses this gap through a one-time balance adjustment at a predetermined block: the network would remove POL from the specified attacker wallets and credit equivalent amounts to designated recovery addresses, leaving the cryptocurrency's existing total supply unchanged.

Governance Approval Remains Essential

The proposal is scheduled for discussion during Polygon's Protocol Governance Call on November 5 at 14:30 UTC. Approval would allow developers to begin preparing and testing the network changes.

Several conditions precede implementation. Binance and Polymarket must demonstrate control over their recovery wallets, and their published security reports must remain consistent with blockchain transaction records. Developers estimate that implementation and testing could take approximately two weeks after approval, with the upgrade first undergoing testing on Polygon's Amoy testnet.

The proposal also documents continuing attempts to bypass the existing restrictions. One suspicious transaction reportedly offered approximately 219,450 POL in fees, underscoring the financial incentives surrounding the frozen assets.

Recovery Plan Raises Blockchain Governance Questions

The proposed intervention raises broader questions about decentralization and asset ownership. Blockchain networks typically rely on established transaction rules that prevent administrators from reversing transfers. Consensus-level interventions do have a historical precedent: Ethereum's 2016 hard fork following The DAO exploit recovered hacked funds and split the network into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. A successful Polygon hard fork would demonstrate how coordinated governance can respond to exceptional security incidents, but changing account balances through network consensus could also create concerns about future interventions.

The proposal describes the recovery mechanism as an extraordinary measure rather than a standard procedure. For now, the frozen tokens remain inaccessible, and their recovery depends on governance approval, technical testing, and coordinated network participation. The November 5 governance call and the subsequent Amoy testnet rollout are the next observable checkpoints before any mainnet change could take effect.