Harmony to fully sunset Layer 1, proposes token migration to Ethereum for AI video initiative

Harmony announced Sunday that it plans to sunset its Layer 1 blockchain and proposed migrating its native ONE (ONE) token to Ethereum, citing continued security threats.

"The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great," Harmony wrote in its X announcement. "Since our mainnet launch in 2019, our community has been resilient through attacks and changes — but it is time to fully sunset the Harmony network."

Harmony said it would help validators transition into new roles in the platform's proposed new initiative involving a "remix economy" with AI video creators. 

The new initiative model revolves around a small group of AI video creators that would publish open prompts and assets. Fans of the creators would fork, or "remix" those originals, and AI agents would turn each fork into many more clips, according to Harmony. 

"We will bootstrap this economy with creators and operators who make AI videos," Harmony said. "Advertising could generate tens of millions of dollars from a million users."

Validators can cease their node operations starting Sept. 10, Harmony noted. The team also said it has set aside a pool of $1.37 million to compensate validators who sunset their nodes, sign an agreement, maintain their stakes, and transition to "governors" in its new initiative.

Migrating ONE

Harmony has proposed airdropping new ONE tokens on Ethereum and migrating exchange listings, without requiring any action from holders, delegators, or validators.

The platform said it seeks to snapshot tokens held in user wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts, and centralized exchanges at the final block. New tokens would be airdropped to the same wallet addresses on Ethereum, Harmony added. 

"Delegated stakes and unclaimed rewards will be airdropped to individual governor vaults," Harmony said. "Multisig safes, liquidity pools, and onchain apps cannot be migrated; users are urged to exit all smart contracts before September 10, 2026."

The token's total supply and emission rate will remain unchanged, while newly issued tokens will be allocated to Harmony's new initiative, the platform said. ONE's price fell 3.86% in the past 24 hours to trade at $0.00073.

Exploits

Harmony experienced a major exploit last month where an attacker reportedly minted 4 billion unauthorized ONE tokens. A later reconstruction from Harmony identified that the attacker minted more than 3 trillion ONE tokens across six transactions.

The exploit stemmed from a flaw in its cross-shard receipt verification that allowed valid receipts to be processed multiple times, allowing exploiters to mint new ONE tokens without a debit elsewhere. The team also flagged a bug with its pre-staking quorum-checking system.

Following the exploit, Harmony rolled back its network to a point before the exploit where the tokens were forged. It said at the time that it considered migrating ONE token as an option.

August's exploit was not the first major security incident involving Harmony. In June 2022, the project's Horizon cross-chain bridge was exploited. Attackers stole crypto assets valued at nearly $100 million, including Ethereum and various stablecoins. Security experts linked the breach to a compromise of the bridge's multi-signature wallet. In the following year, the FBI attributed the attack to the North Korean state-backed hacker organizations, the Lazarus Group and APT 38.