Harmony has announced plans to fully sunset its Layer 1 blockchain, ending an infrastructure effort that began with its 2019 mainnet launch.
The project cited continuing security threats and said validators may begin shutting down nodes on September 10. Harmony has allocated approximately $1.37 million to compensate qualifying validators transitioning away from network operations.
Harmony is proposing to migrate its ONE token to Ethereum through an airdrop based on balances at the final Harmony block.
According to the plan, wallet balances, staking delegations, validator rewards and centralized-exchange balances would be included. Harmony warned that liquidity pools, multisig safes and onchain applications cannot be migrated automatically and urged users to exit smart contracts before September 10.
The network suffered another major exploit in August after attackers abused flaws in cross-shard receipt verification to generate unauthorized ONE. Harmony had previously been hit by the approximately $100 million Horizon bridge breach in 2022, later attributed by the FBI to North Korean-linked hacking groups.
Harmony now plans to redirect the project toward an AI-video initiative while maintaining ONE as an Ethereum-based asset.
TOKEN RECON ASSESSMENT
This is an important warning for the entire altcoin market.
Launching a blockchain is one thing.
Maintaining security, validator economics, developer activity and a sustainable business model for years is much harder.
Harmony’s exit demonstrates that even established Layer 1 projects can reach a point where maintaining sovereign blockchain infrastructure no longer makes economic or security sense.
ONE holders should pay close attention to official migration instructions and exchange-specific procedures.
