Harmony to Shut Down Blockchain, Migrate ONE to Ethereum

The Harmony blockchain, launched in 2019, will be discontinued, and its native token ONE will migrate to Ethereum in the form of an ERC-20 token.

Citing threats from state actors and AI agents, the team announced the decision. Validators can start turning off their nodes as of Thursday.

Harmony Follows BounceBit Out of the Layer 1 Business

The shutdown marks the end of a difficult period for the network. An exploit in August minted approximately 4 billion ONE, or about 26% of the total supply, pushing the token to a record low of $0.0005735.

Harmony responded by performing a rollback. The chain had been a target earlier as well. A 2022 attack on its Horizon Bridge siphoned nearly $99.6 million.

The network's exit continues a trend. In August, BounceBit also discontinued its Layer 1 after an attacker moved 286.5 million BB, later reissuing the token on BNB Chain.

However, the sunset announcement did not mention those two incidents.

“The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great. 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,” the team said.

What Happens to ONE Holders

ONE holders are not required to take any action. Harmony will take a snapshot of balances at the last block and then airdrop new tokens to the same addresses on Ethereum.

Multisig wallets, liquidity pools, and onchain applications will not be able to move with the tokens. Harmony advised users to withdraw from all smart contracts by September 10.

Validators can begin shutting down at 7 a.m. Pacific time on September 10. A fund of $1.372 million will compensate those who sign an agreement and continue as governors.

The total supply and emission rate will remain the same. However, future emissions will be used to fund an AI video project named The Remix Economy by Harmony.

Harmony outlines an open library of prompts and assets that fans can fork and AI agents can expand into many stories per branch. The project anticipates millions of remixes daily and will subsidize operators' hardware for one year, while also requiring operators to stake tokens.

The native token has not yet gained from this shift. It has fallen more than 2% over the last 24 hours.

On Monday, ONE was trading around $0.00074, about 29% higher than the record low set on August 12. Its market capitalization is roughly $11 million, which puts it outside the top 1,000 tokens by market cap.