Binance and Polymarket Propose Hard Fork to Recover 70.49M Polygon (POL)

Recovery Proposal Targets 70.49M POL

Polygon has reached the proposal stage of a hard fork, the earliest point on a path that ends, if every gate clears, in a production change to mainnet. A document posted on Nov. 4 on the Polygon governance forum, drafted by Binance and Polymarket and published by Polygon Labs' validator support team, asks the network to change its software once: at a block number fixed in advance, new client code would sweep every token out of five blocked attacker addresses and credit the identical amount to recovery wallets under the two companies' control. The sum is about 70.49 million Polygon (POL). The Polygon (POL) price stood at $0.0924 on Oct. 29, the reference the proposal uses to value the blocked stash at roughly $6.5 million; the token has since moved 6.0% in the past 24 hours, the kind of swing our Polygon technical analysis tracks. The plan goes before Polygon's Protocol Governance Call on Nov. 5 at 14:30 UTC, where the Polygon network's validators, the operators who run the chain and vote on changes of this scale, hear proposals presented. For the network's upgrade history and risk profile, our Polygon review covers the MATIC-to-POL migration and the governance path now under test. Binance and Polymarket want the tokens relocated; Polygon would have to change its software for that to happen, which is what makes the measure a hard fork rather than a parameter tweak. A hard fork rewrites the rules every validator must follow, so it cannot execute without the validator set's consent. The draft sets one precondition before any code ships: the two companies must demonstrate to Polygon Labs that they own the recovery wallets and confirm that in writing. The recovery proposal is blunt about how unusual the step is, calling the fork an extreme measure that “should not be reproduced commonly.” No client release exists yet; the document only defines the mechanics a future release would carry.

How the Tokens Were Frozen

The tokens reached the blocked list on Oct. 29, the day both incidents landed. Attackers compromised an outside script serving Polymarket and struck traders while they were logged in; the platform restricted its international site to order cancellations, reopened trading the same day, and promised users refunds. The four wallet addresses left over from that incident hold about 23.86 million Polygon (POL) between them. A fifth address is linked to Binance and carries about 46.63 million POL, and it belongs to a far larger event: the exchange has put its own losses at about $6.3 billion, which would rank it as the biggest hack in crypto's history. The proposal's accompanying data lists every balance at block 96,399,251, so validators can check the ledger against the claim before they vote. The blocklist is the reason a fork is on the table at all. Binance and Polymarket asked the four block producers to add the attackers' addresses to a list of blocked wallets, but block producers consult that list only when they restart their software, which means every newly blocked address forces a restart across the network. That friction shows in the attacker's behavior. A pending transaction submitted on Oct. 30 offered a fee of about 219,450 POL, roughly $20,000 at the Oct. 29 price, an attempt to buy priority for a transfer the list exists to stop. The proposal adds that the hacker has also offered validators money to help a transaction get past the block list. The frozen balances have not moved; the attempts to move them have not stopped, and each restart the list forces is a cost the four block producers keep paying.

Two Weeks to Amoy, Then a Vote

For COINOTAG's reading, the proposal text is the document that matters, and it writes its own limits into the code path. The fork executes only if Polygon governance approves it, and only while both companies' incident reports stay public and match what the blockchain records. If the Nov. 5 call returns approval, the authors estimate about two weeks to build the change and test it on Amoy, Polygon's testnet, before any activation at the fixed block on mainnet. The $6.5 million at stake is small against the token's market cap; the precedent is what the draft guards against. It also turns on the line between exchange custody and wallet security. The gate still ahead is the first one: governance consent at 14:30 UTC today, then written proof that the recovery wallets belong to the victims.