Harmony Plans to Roll Back Two Networks Following 3.01 Trillion Fake ONE Minting

Harmony has announced the minting of 3.01 trillion fake ONE tokens and plans to roll back its Shard 0 and Shard 1 networks to their pre-attack state.

Layer 1 blockchain network Harmony is preparing to initiate a comprehensive chain rollback following last week’s exploit. Validators plan to return to the point immediately preceding the verified transaction where the fake ONE minting occurred.

If this operation is implemented, all blocks and transactions created after said point will be removed from the network. In doing so, Harmony aims to eliminate the fraudulent state created by the attacker and restore the integrity of the network. The company also announced that it is considering options such as token burning, blacklisting affected wallets, and a ONE token migration.

Harmony Rolls Back for 3.01 Trillion Fake ONE

Initial investigations suggested that only 4 billion ONE had been minted. However, subsequent analysis revealed that a total of 3.01 trillion ONE was minted across six transactions to four attacker wallets. One of these wallets transferred 2.4 trillion ONE—valued at approximately $3 billion at pre-attack prices—in less than two minutes.

Harmony stated that it has traced almost all of the fake tokens to specific wallets or services. However, because a portion of the tokens passed through decentralized exchange pools and bridges, it makes burning them safely without affecting innocent users a challenge.

The exploit was explained to have originated from a vulnerability in transaction receipt verification between shards. This vulnerability allowed valid receipts to be processed multiple times, resulting in the production of new ONE tokens without a corresponding deduction from another account. Harmony patched the vulnerability on August 12.