Unprecedented Closure for a Once-Hyped Rival
Developers behind the Harmony network have put forward a proposal to fully sunset the blockchain and issue matching ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum to every wallet that held ONE. The move is strikingly rare: most chains that die simply fade as users and builders drift away, rather than announcing a formal shutdown with a migration roadmap.
The project flagged « threats posed by state actors and AI agents » as the deciding factor, noting that defending the network had grown too costly. The proposal is explicitly non-binding, and Harmony has not yet confirmed whether the decision will go through the network’s validator-governance process.
From Billions in Deposits to a Fraction of a Cent
At its height, Harmony attracted serious capital. Its fast, low-fee network was framed as a rival to Ethereum and newer chains such as Solana. ONE touched roughly 38 cents in late 2021, and by early 2022 the protocol held over a billion dollars in user deposits — with a single game, DeFi Kingdoms, accounting for $747 million of that total.
The tone shifted dramatically after the Horizon bridge was drained of nearly $100 million in mid-2022, an attack later tied by the FBI to North Korea’s Lazarus Group and APT38. ONE subsequently lost up to 99% of its peak value.
Recent Exploit and the Controversial Rollback
On Aug. 11, an attacker exploited a flaw in Harmony’s cross-shard transaction verification, minting more than three trillion unauthorized ONE across six transactions. In response, Harmony rolled the chain backward — permanently erasing over 109,000 transactions from its history, a divisive step that drew criticism from parts of the community.
The Strange Pivot: AI Video
Under the shutdown plan, validators who power Harmony’s blockchain would see their future rewards redirected not to token holders but to what Harmony calls the « Remix Economy for AI Video » — a subscription service where creators publish prompts and assets for AI agents to generate video clips. The network has set aside $1.372 million, equal to one year of validator rewards before the August exploit, to compensate nodes that shut down on time.
ONE traded around $0.00073 on Monday, down roughly 4% in 24 hours, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding the proposal.
