According to ME News, Harmony Protocol announced an updated rollback plan following a forged minting incident, targeting August 11, 2026 checkpoints. The network will roll back Shard 0 to block 92,730,034 and Shard 1 to block 94,978,278, both recorded at 07:25:37 UTC on August 12, 2026. However, the team has now reset the blockchain to its state on August 11, hours before an attacker forged a fresh supply. Validators will switch to the corresponding replacement databases and resume block production from heights 92,730,035 and 94,978,279. The team assessed several alternatives including targeted burns, blacklisting, selective replay, and token migration, but rejected these options due to concerns about affecting unrelated funds or failing to fully remove forged states. Harmony ultimately opted to replace the databases after evaluating that these alternatives risked causing chain state inconsistencies.
The investigation has mapped the movement of the forged ONE across the network, revealing that one wallet involved in the forged mint attempted 534 transfers of 5 billion ONE each within 106 seconds, with 477 transfers succeeding and moving 2.385 trillion ONE. According to Harmony, the funds reached standalone wallets, exchange accounts, DEX routers and pools, liquidity provider positions, bridge contracts, wrapped ONE, staking wallets and high-volume service wallets. The team traced more than 99.9% of the forged ONE to a wallet or service boundary, with the amount that can be safely destroyed being smaller due to tokens entering shared balances and exchange wallets. The team noted that tracking of funds has covered over 99.9% of the forged ONE pathways, however, "traceability to a wallet or cluster" does not imply identification of specific individuals or guarantee that all associated funds can be safely destroyed.
Harmony has completed full archiving of Shard 0 from block 92,730,035 to 92,871,662, encompassing 141,628 consecutive blocks, 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. Of the regular transactions, 104,545, or 95.80%, were classified as automated, with DEX automation representing 99,863 transactions including 75,430 successful swaps and 11,804 failed bot attempts. The team examined whether transactions could be safely restored after the rollback, finding only 22 simple native transfers without obvious dependencies, while 860 native transfers raised questions involving balances, funding sources, or later spending. All 315 staking transactions depend on chain and epoch state, with balances, nonces, and token approvals changing once the replacement chain starts. The team has confirmed that all blocks and regular transactions after the rollback checkpoint will be discarded.
Harmony confirmed that an independent third-party security company has reviewed the incident and verified the discovery of the forged minting and primary fund flows. The network is currently collaborating with exchanges, cross-chain bridges, and law enforcement to assess impacts and develop solutions. The team stated that validators must execute the rollback according to the official recovery procedure and complete the upgrade in line with the official operational checklist. Harmony has made initial progress toward tracing the hacker and is working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement to preserve records and continue the investigation. The network's existing in-place rewind function was ruled out due to concerns about leaving some data behind that could preserve attack routes or cause validators to reach different states. Harmony considered alternative recovery methods including burning or repairing the forged ONE directly, but rejected these options due to the tokens having already passed through exchanges and decentralized exchange pools.
The rollback and forced validator upgrade raise near-term operational risk, settlement uncertainty, and confidence pressure on ONE. The exploit pushed ONE to a record low last week after roughly 4 billion tokens appeared without authorization, swelling supply by about 26%. ONE changed hands at roughly $0.00072 on Tuesday, down 4% over 24 hours, with its market value shrunk to about $10.6 million, leaving the token outside the top 1,000 by capitalization. The rollback removes the forged supply but also deletes legitimate trades, swaps, and staking actions made during the same window. Harmony said it is working with exchanges and bridges to soften that hit. The incident represents Harmony's second major security incident, following its Horizon Bridge loss of approximately $100 million in June 2022 after private keys controlling the bridge were compromised, highlighting ongoing security challenges for the network. Few networks take such drastic steps - when Sui stalled in May, block production simply resumed, while Harmony must discard nearly a week of activity.
