Harmony shuts down over AI fears, but will it be safer on Ethereum?

Blockchain network Harmony Protocol has taken the decision to wind down, worried that “threats posed by state actors and AI agents are too great.”

Harmony informed users on Sunday via X that the project, launched in 2019, would migrate to Ethereum, where it hoped its ONE token would be safer.

However, the prevalence of hacks currently wreaking havoc on the Ethereum ecosystem suggests that Harmony may well remain exposed in its new home.

On August 11, the protocol suffered an exploit which resulted in the “unauthorized minting” of  3 trillion native ONE tokens. The team later executed a rollback of the chain, restoring its pre-hack state.

The price of ONE dropped sharply directly after the hack and has lost more than 40% of its value over the past month.

Harmony was previously rocked by a devastating $100 million hack of its Horizon bridge back in 2022, a year which saw multiple bridges lose nine-figure sums.

At its peak, earlier that same year, the network held over $1 billion of TVL. Today, that figure sits at just $150,000.

Running to safety

The migration will be based on a snapshot with user balances “airdropped to the same wallet addresses on Ethereum.”

Tokens deposited in smart contracts, however, cannot be migrated and those users have been given just three days warning to withdraw any such funds.