Harmony will shut down the blockchain it launched in 2019 and migrate its native token, Harmony (ONE), to Ethereum (ETH) as a new ERC-20 asset.

The team cited threats from state actors and artificial intelligence (AI) agents. Validators can begin switching off their nodes on Thursday.

Harmony Follows BounceBit Out of the Layer 1 Business

The sunset caps a punishing stretch for the network. In August, an exploit minted roughly 4 billion ONE, about 26% of the total supply, and sent the token to a record low of $0.0005735.

Harmony answered with a rollback. The chain was a target long before that. A 2022 breach of its Horizon Bridge drained close to $99.6 million.

Meanwhile, the retreat follows a pattern. BounceBit also retired its Layer 1 in August after an attacker moved 286.5 million BB, reissuing the token on BNB Chain.

The sunset notice did not name the two events, though. 

“The threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great. Since our mainnet launch in 2019, our community has been resilient through attacks and changes—but it is time to fully sunset the Harmony network,” the team said.

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What Happens to ONE Holders

Holders do not need to claim anything. Harmony will snapshot balances at the final block, then airdrop new tokens to the same addresses on Ethereum.

Multisig safes, liquidity pools, and onchain applications cannot travel with them. Harmony urged users to exit every smart contract before September 10.

Validators may power down from 7 a.m. Pacific on September 10. A pool worth $1.372 million will pay those who sign an agreement and stay on as governors.

Total supply and the emission rate stay unchanged. Future emissions will instead fund an AI video venture Harmony calls The Remix Economy.

Harmony describes an open library of prompts and assets that fans fork and AI agents expand into dozens of stories per branch. It projects millions of remixes per day and will subsidize operators’ hardware for a year while requiring operators to stake tokens.

Meanwhile, the network’s native token has yet to see the benefits of this pivot. It has dropped over 2% in the past day.

ONE traded near $0.00074 on Monday, roughly 29% above the record low it set on August 12. Its market value is near $11 million, placing it outside the top 1,000 tokens by market cap.

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Source: BeInCrypto