Harmony Protocol Ceases Operations, Migrates to Ethereum

Harmony Protocol has decided to shut down, citing worries that “threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great.”

On Sunday, the team announced via X that the 2019-launched project would move to Ethereum, where they hope the ONE token will be more secure.

Yet the wave of exploits currently battering Ethereum suggests Harmony could still be exposed on the new chain.

On August 11, the protocol experienced an exploit that led to the “unauthorized minting” of 3 trillion native ONE tokens. The team later rolled back the chain, restoring its pre-hack state.

ONE’s price fell sharply after the hack and has lost more than 40% of its value over the past month.

Harmony had previously been hit by a devastating $100 million hack of its Horizon bridge in 2022, a year when multiple bridges lost nine-figure sums.

At its peak earlier that year, the network held over $1 billion in total value locked. Today, that figure stands at just $150,000.

Running to safety

The migration will use a snapshot, with user balances “airdropped to the same wallet addresses on Ethereum.”

Tokens deposited in smart contracts, however, cannot be migrated, and those users have been given only three days' notice to withdraw such funds.

Alongside winding down the Harmony network and moving to Ethereum, the project appears to be pivoting to become “the remix economy for AI video.”

It ambitiously eyes advertising revenue that “could generate tens of millions of dollars from a million users.”

The migration announcement recommends that existing Harmony validators consider taking new roles as “governors, AI video operators or affiliates.”

Will Harmony be safer on Ethereum?

While Harmony’s track record is weak, its chosen destination has itself seen a worrying number of security incidents in recent months.

Blockchain security firm CertiK tallied 344 incidents in the first half of 2026 in a recent report. Of these, 153 occurred on Ethereum, roughly 44% of the total.

The year’s uptick in exploits is suspected to be linked to the rise in powerful AI models.

In June, the crypto community nervously awaited the release of Anthropic’s Fable, but it quickly became clear the model had been “nerfed” to avoid handling cybersecurity-related queries.

That said, at the protocol level, Ethereum is about as safe as blockchains get. However, several other networks have recently suffered exploits targeting their structural layer.

Besides the Harmony incident, a bug caused disruption and losses across at least four chains using a vulnerable Cosmos EVM module.

Also in late August, an exploit of Core DAO resulted in $5.5 million of validator rewards being issued early.

Ultimately, even on a comparatively secure base layer like Ethereum, safety depends on the quality of each project’s code. Whether Harmony’s new AI video venture will sink or swim is up to the team alone, no matter the hosting chain.