Harmony to Roll Back Chain After Tracking Trillions in Forged ONE Tokens

Harmony has moved from weighing a rollback to naming the exact checkpoints it will restore after an attacker minted trillions of counterfeit ONE tokens. In an Aug. 17 incident update, the team said validators will switch to replacement databases at shard 0 block 92,730,034 and shard 1 block 94,978,278, both aligned to Aug. 11 at 23:25:37 UTC. After the cutover, new blocks are expected to resume at heights 92,730,035 and 94,978,279. The decision effectively resets the network to a "full recovery state", wiping not only the malicious changes but also all legitimate activity that occurred after the checkpoints—one of the most disruptive remedies available on a live blockchain. Harmony said the first confirmed forged mint hit shard 0 at block 92,730,036. It chose block 92,730,034 as a one-block safety buffer because the intermediate block contained no regular or staking transactions, no incoming receipts, and no gas usage, while reflecting the same state. The forged mint did not originate on shard 1, but the team selected the matching timestamp there as an added precaution. Alternatives considered included targeted token burns, wallet blacklists, token migration, selective transaction replay, and a simpler database rewind. Harmony said it ruled them out because the forged ONE had already propagated through exchanges, DEX pools, contracts, bridges, staking positions, and shared wallets. Selectively removing balances risked harming unrelated users or leaving the chain in an inconsistent state. Harmony also stressed that tracing token flows is not the same as attributing activity to an individual. One wallet tied to the forged mint attempted 534 transfers of 5 billion ONE within 106 seconds; 477 transfers succeeded, moving 2.385 trillion ONE. The team said its subsequent flow model accounted for nearly all of the forged amount across services and transaction fees, but emphasized that wallets, pools, exchanges, and services can hold commingled funds belonging to many users, making "safe" burning impractical. The rollback will also erase legitimate transactions. Harmony said the affected shard 0 archive includes 141,628 consecutive blocks, 109,126 regular transactions, and 315 staking transactions. While it classified 95.8% of regular transactions as automated, it acknowledged there remains real activity that cannot be reliably restored. On the replacement chain, balances, nonces, pool reserves, approvals, swap deadlines, and staking state will diverge, meaning a replayed transaction could produce a different outcome or turn a previous failure into a success. Harmony said it is working with exchanges, bridges, law enforcement, and an independent security firm as the investigation continues. The plan may remove the forged state, but execution hinges on validator coordination and on exchanges and bridges handling the discontinuity without crediting transactions from the discarded chain.