Harmony Proposes Layer-1 Shutdown, ONE Migration to Ethereum

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

On Sunday, Harmony proposed taking a final network snapshot, issuing ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum and migrating exchange listings. Validators would be offered options to stop their nodes, continue as governors, or join its new AI-video initiative. 

Harmony described the proposal as non-binding and did not specify when the final block would be produced or 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 after a seven-day introduction and 14-day vote.

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

However, Harmony said multisig safes, liquidity pools and onchain applications cannot be migrated, urging users to exit all smart contracts before Sept. 10. Validators may begin shutting down that day, with a $1.372 million pool set aside to compensate those that stop on time, retain their stakes and agree to serve as governors.

Harmony proposal comes weeks after an exploit

The proposal comes less than four weeks after an exploit created forged ONE tokens and led Harmony to plan a rollback that would wipe more than 109,000 transactions, marking 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 the 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 the forged tokens to wallets or service boundaries and were working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement.

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