An attacker exploited Harmony's Layer 1 blockchain and minted at least 4 billion ONE tokens, sending the token to an all-time low of $0.0005735. Harmony acknowledged the incident but hasn't disclosed the root cause or confirmed the exact amount minted. The minted tokens represent roughly 26% of ONE's total supply.
The mint and the crash
ONE was trading around $0.00117 before the drop. At the time of writing, it sits 33% above the all-time low but is still down nearly 40% in 24 hours. The token is off 32% over seven days and more than 28% on the monthly chart.
About 2.8 billion of the minted tokens were moved to exchanges, according to on-chain data. That's a lot of sell pressure hitting the market at once.
Where the tokens went
Roughly 97% of the minted tokens are already on exchanges, either sold or sitting in deposit wallets. The attacker still has about 115 million ONE left to sell onchain, which is around 2.9% of the minted amount.
X user Juiceberg was among the first to raise the alarm on August 12. The warning came fast, but the damage was already done.
Harmony's response
Harmony is working with exchanges to freeze funds and has paused the LayerZero-Harmony bridge. The team asked validators to upgrade with a patch to prevent further minting of ONE.
Harmony traced the theft to four wallet addresses and asked exchanges to block and freeze funds from them. The team is also working on a patch and rollback options to address the already minted tokens.
A familiar problem
This isn't the first attack on Harmony. The network lost about $100 million in 2022 when its Horizon Bridge was exploited. The latest incident came shortly after another attack on the XRPL-Coreum bridge, where nearly 200,000 XRP were stolen.
The exact amount minted and the root cause remain unclear. Harmony hasn't said when the patch will be deployed or whether a rollback is even feasible.
