Harmony Proposes Shutting Down Layer 1 and Moving ONE to Ethereum

Harmony has proposed shutting down the Layer 1 network it launched in 2019 and migrating ONE to Ethereum, ending validator-based operation of the blockchain after a series of security failures and years of declining ecosystem activity.

Under the network sunset proposal, Harmony will take a snapshot at the final block and issue corresponding ERC-20 ONE tokens to the same addresses on Ethereum. Wallet balances, centralized exchange holdings, staking delegations and validator rewards are included, with no manual claim required for ordinary holders.

Users Must Exit Smart Contracts Before September 10

Liquidity pools, multisig safes and other onchain applications cannot be transferred automatically to Ethereum. Users with ONE or other assets deployed inside Harmony smart contracts have been told to exit those positions before September 10, 2026.

Delegated ONE and unclaimed staking rewards will move into individual governor vaults under the proposed structure. Harmony plans to publish the ERC-20 contract, governor-vault contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts for public review before the migration.

The ONE supply and emission schedule would remain unchanged. The proposal is non-binding, however, and Harmony has not published the final block height or a definitive date when the Layer 1 will stop permanently.

Harmony is not the only project consolidating onto a larger ecosystem. Moonbeam recently left Polkadot for Base, moving GLMR through a 1:1 migration as its parachain winds down.

August Exploit Accelerated Harmony’s Security Crisis

The shutdown proposal arrives less than a month after Harmony suffered another major protocol failure. The August attack initially surfaced as an unauthorized 4 billion ONE mint, but subsequent reconstruction found that roughly 3.01 trillion ONE had been forged across six transactions.

The flaw allowed valid cross-shard receipts to be processed repeatedly, creating ONE without a corresponding debit elsewhere. Harmony ultimately prepared a rollback to its August 11 state, a recovery process that discarded more than 109,000 regular transactions.

That attack followed the $100 million Horizon Bridge theft in 2022, later attributed by the FBI to North Korea’s Lazarus Group and APT38.

Harmony cited security threats from state-backed attackers and increasingly capable AI agents in proposing the Layer 1 shutdown.

Validators Offered $1.372M to Become Governors

Validators can begin shutting down nodes at 7:00 a.m. Pacific on September 10. Harmony has allocated $1.372 million for a one-time compensation program, equal to network-wide validator rewards during the year preceding the August attack.

Payments would be distributed across four quarters to eligible validators and delegators who stop nodes on schedule, sign the required agreement, retain their stake and continue as governors.

Future ONE emissions would instead support Harmony’s proposed “Remix Economy for AI Video”, where creators publish prompts and reusable assets while AI agents expand them into new video content. Operators would stake ONE, run GPU infrastructure and earn rewards tied to service availability.

Harmony plans to subsidize GPU hardware during the first year and is targeting up to $1 million in combined operator revenue. Both the Layer 1 shutdown and AI-video plans remain non-binding, while users with assets inside Harmony smart contracts face the earlier September 10 exit deadline.

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