Finance12 August, 20262 min read
Harmony Confirms Unauthorized 4B ONE Token Mint Exploit, ONE Plunges About 40%
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Unauthorized mint of roughly 4 billion ONE, about 26% of supply, confirmed. ONE price dropped roughly 40% following the exploit.
ONE supply shock
Harmony’s ONE token fell about 40% in Asian morning hours Wednesday after an apparent exploit created roughly 4 billion new tokens, an amount equal to more than a quarter of the token’s existing supply. CoinDesk said Harmony confirmed the attack and told network operators to install an emergency software update to prevent any further minting, while it paused its token bridge and asked exchanges to freeze funds traced to four addresses linked to the incident.
Pluang added that Harmony’s native token ONE plunged to a record low of $0.0005735 after an exploit allowed unauthorized minting of about 4 billion tokens, roughly 26% of its supply. CoinGape reported that the Layer-1 blockchain suffered an exploit in which an attacker minted 4 billion ONE tokens without authorization, and that Harmony’s patch was meant to prevent further minting.
Freezes, patch, rollback
CoinDesk said Harmony told network operators to install an emergency software update and that it was “working on a patch and rollback options,” while it asked exchanges to block and freeze funds traced to four wallet addresses.
CoinGape quoted Harmony saying, “This patch prevents any further minting. We’ll follow up with another update to address the already minted tokens,” as the protocol asked all validators to upgrade to a released patch.
DailyCoin reported that Harmony confirmed the unauthorized minting of roughly 4 billion ONE tokens and stated it is coordinating with exchanges to freeze funds linked to four identified attacker wallets.
Altcoin Buzz said Harmony was investigating a possible network rollback, and described the rollback as potentially reversing the unauthorized mint and transactions connected to the exploit.
Market and precedent
CoinDesk tied the incident to Harmony’s broader security history, noting that in 2022 about $100 million was stolen from its Horizon bridge after attackers compromised private keys controlling it, with the FBI later attributing that theft to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. CoinDesk also recalled that in December 2023 a bug in Harmony’s staking system caused about 146.3 million ONE to be created, and that Harmony said at the time that 74 addresses were involved with one receiving 51.2 million ONE.
DailyCoin said the token hit an all-time low of $0.0005735 on Wednesday, August 12, after the unauthorized mint, and that it later recovered to around $0.00087. CoinGape reported that the attacker minted 4 billion ONE tokens without authorization and that almost all were transferred to crypto exchanges for sale, while it said the protocol paused the bridge to prevent cross-chain transfers.