Harmony Proposes Retiring Layer-1 Mainnet and Migrating ONE to Ethereum (ETH)

ONE Set to Become an ERC-20 Token

Harmony has proposed retiring its layer-1 blockchain entirely and reissuing its native ONE token as an ERC-20 asset on Ethereum mainnet, according to the project's official Sept. 6 announcement. The plan is explicitly non-binding and subject to change, and no date has been set for the final block. Harmony cited security threats from state actors and AI agents, saying the community has overcome repeated attacks since the mainnet launched in 2019 but that the time has come to wind the network down. At the final block, Harmony plans to record ONE held in user wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and centralized exchange accounts before distributing replacement tokens. No claim process is required: ERC-20 ONE would be airdropped to the same addresses captured in the snapshot, while delegated stakes and unclaimed rewards flow into individual governor vaults. The token's total supply and emission rate would remain unchanged, and the team says the token contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts will be published so they can be audited. Not everything can move. Multisig safes, liquidity pools and on-chain applications cannot be migrated through the proposal, so holders are being asked to exit contracts before Sept. 10. Exchange-held ONE is included in the planned snapshot, with Harmony proposing to coordinate moving centralized exchange listings to the Ethereum version of the token — a shift that would place ONE inside the broader Ethereum ecosystem and subject it to Ethereum gas fees and tooling rather than Harmony's own consensus.

the project's official Sept. 6 announcementhttps://x.com/harmonyprotocol/status/2096604684450775296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

$1.372M Pool for Node Operators

Validators face a separate transition. Node operators can begin shutting down from Sept. 10, with a cutoff at 7 a.m. Pacific Time on that date. Harmony has earmarked $1.372 million for validators and delegators who stop their nodes on time, sign an agreement, retain their stakes and continue as governors, with payouts spread over four quarters and covering the difference in emission rewards between a validator's last block and the network's final block. The team wants to redirect future ONE emissions into an AI video “remix economy”: a small group of creators would publish prompts and assets fans could fork or remix, with AI agents turning the branches into new clips. Operators would handle generation, distribution and moderation, with staking and uptime tied to rewards. Harmony plans to subsidize GPU hardware in the first year and says operators could generate up to $1 million in combined revenue, alongside a $10 monthly subscription and a 30% referral commission. The proposal arrives less than a month after an exploit forced the project to consider rewinding the chain. On Aug. 12, an unauthorized mint was detected; Harmony's reconstruction later found more than 3 trillion ONE created across six transactions, traced to a flaw in cross-shard receipt verification that let valid receipts be processed more than once. One linked wallet attempted 534 transfers of 5 billion ONE each within 106 seconds — 477 succeeded, moving 2.385 trillion ONE. The project rolled back to Aug. 11 checkpoints, removing 141,628 consecutive shard-0 blocks containing 109,126 regular transactions, 95.8% of them classified as automated activity. Token migration was examined then but rejected as too disruptive; weeks later, it anchors the plan to retire the network. Harmony's record also includes the June 2022 Horizon bridge hack of close to $100 million and a December 2023 staking flaw that minted 146.28 million ONE. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bybit.

Consolidation Onto Ethereum

For COINOTAG, the common thread is consolidation: Ethereum keeps absorbing networks that can no longer justify running their own consensus, with Lisk Chain also scheduled to shut on Oct. 31 — a thinning of the altcoin base layer. Critically, the proposal has no recorded vote yet. Harmony has not confirmed whether it will enter its validator-led governance process, which under published rules requires participation representing 51% of total stake weight and 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction period and a 14-day voting period. Until a recorded outcome exists, the migration remains a proposal, not a commitment, and the Sept. 10 contract-exit deadline is the first hard date to watch. As context on the destination chain, Vitalik Buterin has argued that over 90% of Ethereum activity could skip full validation, and our Ethereum 2.0 upgrade guide traces how the network reshaped itself across its major upgrades.