Harmony has announced plans to sunset its layer-1 blockchain and migrate its ONE token to Ethereum, citing security threats from state-sponsored hackers and artificial intelligence-powered attackers that have become too costly to defend against alone. The proposal, described as non-binding, represents a dramatic shift for the 2019 blockchain project and signals a broader economic challenge facing smaller independent chains.

Why Is Harmony Abandoning Its Blockchain?

Harmony's decision stems from multiple security incidents and the escalating sophistication of threats. The project suffered a significant exploit in August that forged billions of tokens, forcing a network rollback. More critically, Harmony was hit by a $100 million bridge hack in 2022 that the FBI attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group, also known as APT38.

The company framed its decision around emerging threats: "The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great," Harmony stated in its September 6 announcement, adding that it was "time to fully sunset the Harmony network." This warning reflects real trends in cybersecurity. A year-long study by Anthropic examining 832 accounts banned for cybercrime activities found that the proportion of accounts rated medium risk or higher increased from around 33% in the first half of the study to 56% in the second half.

OpenAI has also raised alarms about AI capabilities in this space, claiming that GPT-6 Astra has attained "Critical" cybersecurity capabilities, demonstrating how quickly frontier AI models can discover and exploit vulnerabilities in computer programs.

What Will Happen to ONE Token Holders?

Harmony plans to take a snapshot of ONE token balances at the final block and airdrop replacement tokens directly to the same Ethereum wallet addresses. Regular token holders do not need to file any claims for this migration.

However, users holding ONE in smart contracts face a critical deadline. Anyone with funds in multisig safes, liquidity pools, or on-chain applications must exit these contracts before September 10, 2026. Starting at 7 a.m. Pacific time on that day, validators will be able to deactivate their nodes.

Delegated stakes and unclaimed rewards will be transferred to private governor vaults. Harmony has allocated $1.37 million for validators who meet the company's conditions and agree to become "governors" in a new AI video business called The Remix Economy.

How to Prepare for the Harmony Migration

• Exit Smart Contracts: If you hold ONE tokens in multisig safes, liquidity pools, or decentralized applications, withdraw your funds before the September 10 deadline to ensure they are included in the Ethereum airdrop.
• Verify Wallet Address: Confirm that your Ethereum wallet address is correctly associated with your ONE holdings, as the snapshot will use your final balances to determine airdrop amounts.
• Monitor Exchange Listings: Watch for updates from cryptocurrency exchanges where ONE is traded, as they will need to update listings and facilitate the token swap on Ethereum.
• Understand Validator Changes: If you operate a Harmony validator node, review the governance requirements for The Remix Economy initiative and decide whether to participate in the new structure.

What Does This Mean for the Broader Crypto Industry?

Harmony is not the first project to abandon an independent blockchain. BounceBit discontinued its layer-1 operation in August after a theft of 286.5 million BB tokens and reissued the coin on the BNB Blockchain.

While Harmony's market capitalization of around $10.7 million and total value locked (TVL) in DeFi of approximately $151,000 suggest it poses no systemic risk, the decision exposes a fundamental economic challenge for smaller layer-1 blockchains. The costs of maintaining validators, infrastructure, and security become increasingly difficult to justify as activity and capital decrease.

By migrating ONE to Ethereum, Harmony trades independence for security. Instead of maintaining its own validator set, the token will rely on Ethereum's proof-of-stake (PoS) security model. This approach eliminates the need for Harmony to defend against attacks independently, but it also means the project surrenders control over its own network.

The broader implication is significant: if this trend accelerates among smaller blockchains, liquidity and activity may increasingly concentrate on major settlement networks like Ethereum. Fewer projects will be able to afford the costs associated with maintaining independent blockchain infrastructure, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape of layer-1 platforms.

The decision also underscores a reality that has become harder to ignore in 2026. According to TRM Labs, there were 207 hacks of crypto assets in the first half of the year, with $972 million in stolen funds. Approximately $577 million of that total was attributed to just two incidents linked to North Korea. For smaller chains without massive security budgets, defending against nation-state-level threats and increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks has become economically untenable.