Harmony Proposes Layer-1 Shutdown to Pivot Toward AI Video Economy
The project cites unsustainable security threats from state actors and AI agents as the driver for migrating its native token to Ethereum.
Harmony has proposed the complete shutdown of its Layer-1 blockchain, signaling a drastic shift in strategy as it seeks to migrate its native token, ONE, to the Ethereum network. The team intends to transition ONE into an ERC-20 asset, effectively abandoning its sovereign mainnet in favor of Ethereum's established security infrastructure.
According to the proposal, the migration will be executed via a final-block snapshot, with tokens automatically airdropped to matching wallet addresses. However, the transition comes with strict requirements for users: all assets must be removed from smart contracts, liquidity pools, and multisig safes before September 10, 2026, as these cannot be migrated. To facilitate the wind-down, Harmony has proposed a $1.372 million compensation pool for validators who shut down their nodes on schedule and transition into governance roles. The team noted that the proposal remains non-binding and is subject to further governance decisions.
The AI Security Crisis
Launched in 2019, Harmony was engineered as a sharded proof-of-stake network designed to solve the "blockchain trilemma" of scalability, security, and decentralization. Despite these goals, the network has struggled against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. The Harmony team explicitly cited the dangers posed by state actors and AI agents as the primary catalyst for the sunset, stating that these threats have become too great to manage independently.
This decision follows a period of significant instability, including an August exploit where an attacker utilized a cross-shard receipt flaw to mint over 3 trillion ONE tokens across six transactions. While some reports have cited lower figures, the event highlighted the systemic vulnerabilities of the network's architecture when faced with modern attack vectors.
A Pivot to AI Video
Beyond the technical migration, Harmony plans to fundamentally rewrite its business model. The project intends to pivot toward an "AI video remix economy," focusing on tools and platforms for creators and users to generate and modify AI-driven video content. This move represents a total departure from its original mission as a foundational blockchain layer, shifting instead toward the application layer of the generative AI boom.
Industry Implications
This pivot is a rare admission within the crypto industry that the cost and complexity of defending a sovereign Layer-1 chain against frontier AI threats can become prohibitive. For years, the industry trend has been toward increasing autonomy and the creation of new mainnets. Harmony's retreat to Ethereum suggests a growing realization that for some projects, the security of a dominant ecosystem is more valuable than the independence of a proprietary chain.
What's Next
Investors and users must now monitor the governance process to see if the non-binding proposal becomes official policy. While the roadmap for the AI video economy has been announced, the specific technical implementation of the "remix economy" remains undefined. The industry will be watching to see if other struggling Layer-1 projects follow Harmony's lead in surrendering their mainnets to avoid the escalating arms race of AI-driven cyber warfare.