Harmony has proposed retiring its seven-year-old Layer 1 blockchain and migrating its native ONE token to Ethereum as an ERC-20 asset. The non-binding plan would move ONE settlement away from Harmony while the team pivots toward an AI-powered video business, citing mounting security challenges and recent instability on the network.
In its official announcement, Harmony said threats from state actors and AI agents had become too significant and that it was time to sunset the network. The proposed migration would take a snapshot at Harmony’s final block and automatically distribute corresponding ERC-20 ONE tokens to the same addresses on Ethereum, without requiring holders to submit individual claims.
— Harmony (@harmonyprotocol) September 6, 2026
ONE Holders Face September 10 Deadline
The snapshot is intended to cover ONE held in wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and centralized exchanges. Harmony said it would publish the ERC-20 contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts for public review. The total ONE supply and emission rate would remain unchanged under the proposed migration.
Not every part of Harmony’s on-chain state can move automatically. Multisig safes, liquidity pools and decentralized applications would remain on the retiring network, prompting Harmony to urge users to exit smart contracts before September 10. The migration therefore creates immediate operational risk for assets still deployed inside non-migratable contracts.
Validators can begin shutting down nodes from September 10. Harmony has set aside approximately $1.372 million to compensate qualifying validators and delegators over four quarters, subject to conditions including shutting down on schedule, retaining stake and taking governance roles in the proposed new initiative. The compensation is intended to bridge the loss of validator emissions between node shutdown and Harmony’s eventual final block.
Harmony Pivots Toward AI Video
The proposed network retirement comes after an August exploit involving Harmony’s cross-shard receipt verification system and a subsequent rollback that removed more than 109,000 transactions from network history. The latest plan represents a fundamental response to security and operating pressures rather than another attempt to repair the existing Layer 1 indefinitely.
Harmony plans to redirect future ONE emissions toward what it calls the “Remix Economy for AI Video,” where creators would publish prompts and reusable assets while AI agents generate derivative video content. ONE could retain roles around staking and governance in the new model, but that utility remains part of a proposed business strategy rather than a guaranteed technical deployment.
Harmony’s existing governance framework requires proposals to reach participation representing 51% of total stake weight and receive 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction period and 14-day vote. However, Harmony has not yet confirmed that the mainnet shutdown and Ethereum migration will proceed through that full governance process, leaving the final execution timetable unresolved.
The immediate priority for users is therefore migration readiness rather than assuming the shutdown is complete. Harmony has proposed a radical shift from operating an independent blockchain to relying on Ethereum for ONE settlement, but the final block, migration execution and broader AI transition remain subject to change.
