Harmony to Shut Down Layer-1 Blockchain, Pursue Ethereum Migration for ONE Token

Harmony plans to shut down its layer-1 blockchain and move its native ONE token to Ethereum after a series of security threats.

The Block reported on Sept. 7 that Harmony wrote in a post on X that threats from nation-state attackers and artificial intelligence agents had become too great. The project said its community had withstood multiple attacks and changes since the mainnet launched in 2019, but added that it was now time to fully shut down the Harmony network.

Validators can stop operating nodes starting Sept. 10. Harmony has set aside a $1.37 million compensation pool for validators that shut down nodes, sign related agreements, maintain staking and transition to becoming governors in new projects.

Harmony proposed migrating the ONE token to Ethereum. It plans to take a snapshot at the network's final block covering personal wallets, staked delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and holdings on centralized exchanges, then airdrop new ONE tokens to the same wallet addresses. Total token supply and issuance will remain unchanged.

Multisig wallets, liquidity pools and on-chain applications will not be migrated automatically. Harmony urged users to withdraw assets from all smart contracts by Sept. 10.

The decision follows repeated security incidents. Harmony said last month it confirmed that an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the network's cross-shard receipt verification system to fraudulently mint more than 3 trillion ONE tokens in six rounds of unauthorized issuance. At the time, the project had been considering rolling the network back to a point before the attack and moving ONE to another chain as a response.

In June 2022, Harmony's Horizon cross-chain bridge was hacked and about $100 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation later said the attack was carried out by Lazarus Group and APT38, hacking groups linked to North Korea.

Harmony said it plans to replace its blockchain business with a new remix economy centered on AI video creators. Under the model, creators would publish prompts and content assets, users would remix them, and AI agents would expand them into various videos.