Harmony Plans Aug. 11 Rollback After 3.01 Trillion Unauthorized ONE Tokens Minted

Harmony said it will roll back its blockchain to Aug. 11 to undo an exploit that resulted in more than 3.01 trillion ONE tokens being minted without authorization. The network would be reverted to 23:25:37 UTC on Aug. 11, seconds before the first confirmed unauthorized mint. The move would wipe the forged supply, but it would also invalidate legitimate activity that occurred after that point, forcing exchanges, bridges and users to reconstruct affected transactions manually. Harmony said two shards were impacted. On Shard 0 alone, the team reviewed 141,628 blocks covering the affected window, which included 109,126 standard transactions and 315 staking transactions. All of those would be removed under the rollback plan. The team said it evaluated less disruptive options, including burning specific balances and blacklisting wallets, but concluded those approaches carried higher risks. The forged tokens had already spread across exchanges, bridges, liquidity pools and wallets holding other users' funds, raising the likelihood that selectively deleting attacker-linked coins could either harm innocent holders or fail to eliminate all counterfeit tokens. Harmony added that legitimate transactions cannot be automatically replayed with certainty. After the network state is restored, balances and other conditions may differ, meaning the same transactions could yield different outcomes. In its investigation, Harmony said the attacker altered records tied to previously completed inter-shard transfers, making old transfers appear unspent and allowing them to be processed again. That mechanism created new ONE without removing a corresponding amount elsewhere. Harmony said roughly six forged transactions minted about 3.01 trillion ONE across four wallets, far above the 4 billion ONE initially reported, which the team said reflected only the first wave detected. One wallet later attempted 534 transfers in 106 seconds; 477 transfers succeeded, moving about 2.385 trillion ONE. Harmony said it has not recovered the assets but has traced most movements to wallets or services. Market reaction has remained negative. ONE traded near $0.00072 on Aug. 18, about 42% below its pre-incident level around $0.00125, after briefly dipping toward $0.00060 during the heaviest selling, according to TradingView. Harmony noted ONE had been trending lower before the incident, with selling pressure intensifying as details of the unauthorized mint emerged and the rollback plan took shape. Harmony's plan is to eliminate approximately 3.01 trillion forged ONE by restoring the chain to its pre-attack state, while acknowledging that legitimate transactions after the recovery point will be erased and must be reconciled by users and services.