Harmony's ONE Token Plunges After Unauthorized Mint of 4 Billion Tokens
On August 12, the ONE token from Harmony experienced a significant decline following a suspected exploit on its Layer-1 blockchain, allowing an attacker to unlawfully mint around 4 billion ONE tokens, which accounts for 26% of the total 15 billion in circulation. Analyst Juiceberg reported that nearly 2.8 billion ONE were moved to exchanges, with 115 million listed for sale on-chain. Harmony acknowledged the breach and is currently developing an emergency patch while considering rollback strategies. They have pinpointed four wallet addresses associated with the exploit and requested exchanges to freeze the assets. The value of ONE plummeted over 39% to roughly $0.000747. This incident marks a continuation of issues for Harmony, which saw 146.3 million ONE minted in 2023 due to a staking flaw and suffered a $100 million loss from the Horizon Bridge hack in June 2022.
Key facts
- Harmony's ONE token plunged on Aug. 12 after a suspected exploit allowed unauthorized minting of ~4 billion ONE.
- New tokens represent ~26% of the ~15 billion ONE circulating before the incident.
- On-chain analyst Juiceberg reported the minting occurred through empty blocks.
- ~2.8 billion ONE were reportedly transferred to exchanges; ~115 million remained on-chain for sale.
- Harmony identified four wallet addresses and asked exchanges to block/freeze funds.
- Harmony paused its token bridge and is working on an emergency patch and evaluating rollback options.
- ONE fell more than 39% to approximately $0.000747.
- In 2023, a staking logic vulnerability caused 146.3 million ONE to be minted; fixed at block 51,118,080.
- In June 2022, Horizon Bridge was hacked for ~$100 million, attributed to Lazarus Group.
- As of Aug. 12, Harmony had not confirmed the 4 billion figure or disclosed the vulnerability.
Entities
Institutions
- Harmony
- NFT Plazas
- CoinMarketCap
- FBI
- Lazarus Group