Harmony to Sunset Layer-1 Network, Migrate ONE Token to Ethereum

Harmony has proposed the complete shutdown of its Layer-1 blockchain and the migration of its native ONE token to the Ethereum network. The project plans to transition ONE into an ERC-20 token, effectively abandoning its own mainnet in favor of Ethereum's infrastructure.

The decision follows a catastrophic security failure in August 2026, where an attacker exploited a flaw in cross-shard receipt verification to mint more than 3 trillion unauthorized ONE tokens. The breach was so severe that it necessitated a network rollback of over 109,000 transactions. In a statement regarding the move, Harmony noted that the threats posed by state actors and AI agents have become too great to manage on its own chain.

A History of Vulnerability

This latest collapse is the culmination of years of security struggles for the network, which launched its mainnet in 2019. Harmony previously suffered a massive blow in June 2022 when its Horizon bridge was exploited for nearly $100 million. That specific attack was later attributed by the FBI to North Korean state-backed hacking groups, specifically the Lazarus Group and APT 38. The repeated inability to secure the network against sophisticated adversaries appears to have been the primary catalyst for the current sunsetting proposal.

The Pivot to AI

Rather than exiting the industry entirely, Harmony intends to pivot its business model toward a new mission termed "The Remix Economy for AI Video." This strategic shift moves the project away from providing foundational blockchain infrastructure and toward the application layer, specifically focusing on AI-driven content creation. By migrating the ONE token to Ethereum, the project can leverage a more secure, established ecosystem while focusing its internal resources on this new AI initiative.

Industry Implications

The sunsetting of Harmony serves as a stark case study on the viability of smaller Layer-1 projects. It highlights the immense difficulty these networks face in maintaining security parity with larger ecosystems when targeted by state-sponsored attackers and evolving AI-driven threats. As the industry matures, the trend of "L1 failure" suggests a consolidation where projects are forced to either achieve massive scale or pivot toward specialized AI applications to survive. Observers will now watch to see if the transition to Ethereum and the shift toward AI video can salvage the project's utility and value.