Harmony proposes ending its Layer 1 for an Ethereum AI pivot

Harmony wants to shut down the blockchain it launched in 2019, seven years after mainnet went live, and move ONE to EETH$2,491.64▼0.18%. The proposal would end the network’s role as Harmony’s operating base while redirecting the project toward an AI-video initiative. Cointelegraph’s report on the proposal says the plan is non-binding.

The proposed sequence is specific: take a final network snapshot, issue ERC-20 ONE tokens on Ethereum and migrate exchange listings. All ONE balances would be recorded at the final block, with replacement tokens airdropped to the same addresses on Ethereum. No claim would be required.

That is a full change in what ONE represents. Holders would move from a native Layer 1 balance to an Ethereum-based token, while Harmony would leave the chain whose security, validators and applications have defined the project since 2019. On the desk’s read, the plan amounts to abandoning the original blockchain and testing whether the token can support an AI-focused economy elsewhere.

The migration mechanics

The snapshot is meant to cover wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and centralized exchanges. The proposal says multisig safes, liquidity pools and onchain applications cannot be migrated, creating a direct exposure for users whose ONE is held inside those structures rather than in ordinary wallets.

Harmony is urging users to exit all smart contracts before September 10. Validators may begin shutting down their nodes on the same date. The consequence is immediate for delegators and application users: positions left inside contracts, pools or safes may not receive the same treatment as wallet balances, while the network’s validator set could start winding down before the Ethereum token transition is complete.

Delegated stakes and unclaimed rewards would be airdropped to individual governor vaults, according to The Block’s report. The token’s total supply and emission rate would remain unchanged, while newly issued tokens would be allocated to Harmony’s new initiative.

The proposal sets aside a $1.372 million pool for validators who stop on time, retain their stakes and agree to serve as governors. Validators would also have the option to stop their nodes, continue as governors or join the AI-video initiative.

The governance clock is also laid out. Under Harmony’s published rules, elected validators can create proposals and unelected validators can vote. Voting power is based on total stake. A proposal needs 51% of total stake weight to participate and 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction period and a 14-day vote.

Those two periods add up to 21 days. September 10 is the stated date for users to exit contracts and validators to begin shutting down, but it is not given as the final migration date.

A pivot after the August exploit

The timing follows a recent attempt to repair the existing chain. On August 12, Harmony said it was considering a rollback after reports that an attacker had minted nearly 4 billion unauthorized ONE, equivalent to about 26% of supply. An outside account claimed roughly 2.8 billion tokens reached exchanges, although Harmony had not confirmed that figure at the time.

The arithmetic puts the reported supply at about 15.38 billion ONE: 4 billion unauthorized tokens divided by 26%, or 4,000,000,000 ÷ 0.26 = 15,384,615,385. That calculation uses the nearly 4 billion figure and the 26% share reported in the proposal coverage; it does not resolve a separate discrepancy in the reporting.

A later reconstruction from Harmony, cited by The Block, identified more than 3 trillion ONE minted across six transactions. The same account attributed the exploit to a flaw in cross-shard receipt verification that allowed valid receipts to be processed multiple times, along with a bug in the pre-staking quorum-checking system. Because the two reported token totals differ sharply, the size of the exploit should be treated according to the specific figure being cited.

On August 17, Harmony said it planned to revert the blockchain to an August 11 checkpoint. That rollback would discard 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions, for 109,441 transactions in total. Investigators had traced nearly all forged tokens to wallets or service boundaries, and Harmony said it was working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement.

The sunset proposal arrives less than four weeks after that exploit and rollback plan. Harmony’s stated reason is continued security threats. Since our mainnet launch in 2019, our community has been resilient through attacks and changes — but it is time to fully sunset the Harmony network,” Harmony wrote, according to The Block.

What replaces the chain

Harmony plans to transition into the AI-video business. The proposed model centers on a small group of AI-video creators publishing open prompts and assets. Fans would fork, or “remix,” those originals, while AI agents would turn each fork into many more clips.

“We will bootstrap this economy with creators and operators who make AI videos. Advertising could generate tens of millions of dollars from a million users,” Harmony wrote, according to The Block.

ONE was trading at $0.00073, down 3.86% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. That move is market context rather than evidence that traders have priced in a particular governance outcome. Ethereum was trading at $2,504.47, down 0.1% over the same period.

For existing holders, the near-term decision is operational: remove ONE from smart contracts before September 10, while holders of ordinary wallet balances await the final-block snapshot and Ethereum issuance process. For validators, the choice is between shutting down, becoming governors or joining the AI-video project, with the $1.372 million pool tied to the governor path described in the proposal. The central unresolved item is the exact date and procedure for the final block and token migration.