Harmony Blockchain Weighs Shutdown After Repeated State-Sponsored Attacks

Harmony, a layer-1 blockchain platform, has proposed ending its independent network and reissuing its ONE token as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. The company says the security burden of running its own validator network has become too costly to manage against state-sponsored hackers and increasingly capable AI attack tools, and it would instead rely on Ethereum's existing proof-of-stake security.

The proposal follows a troubled security history for Harmony. In August, an exploit allowed attackers to illegitimately create billions of ONE tokens through a flaw in how cross-shard transaction receipts were recorded, forcing Harmony to roll the network back to its pre-breach state. In 2022, the company also suffered a roughly $100 million theft from its Horizon Bridge, an attack the FBI attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group.

Harmony's concerns reflect a wider trend. Research cited in the announcement shows a rising share of malicious activity linked to increasingly capable AI systems, and industry tracking firm TRM Labs reported over 200 crypto hacks in the first half of 2026 alone, with hundreds of millions of dollars stolen, much of it tied to North Korean threat actors. The proposal is described as non-binding for now.