Harmony confirms 4 billion ONE token minting exploit as price falls 34%
A fresh security breach at Layer 1 network Harmony has resulted in the unauthorized creation of 4 billion ONE tokens, compounding investor concerns over the project's recurring vulnerabilities.
The developers behind the Layer 1 network Harmony confirmed on Wednesday that a security breach resulted in the illicit creation of 4 billion ONE tokens. The exploit was first identified by an independent blockchain analyst tracking unusual on-chain activity earlier in the day.
The sudden increase in token supply triggered an immediate sell-off, driving the price of ONE down 34 percent over a 24-hour period to roughly $0.0008. Based on current market prices, the unauthorized tokens represent a stolen value of approximately $3.2 million.
Market watchers note that the attacker moved quickly to liquidate the illicitly created assets across centralized trading venues. "The attacker has roughly 115M ONE left to sell onchain — about 2.9% of the ~4B they minted," wrote X user Juiceberg, who initially flagged the breach.
Juiceberg added: "The overwhelming majority (~97%) is already on exchanges and has either been sold or is sitting in deposit wallets ready to sell." This rapid dumping places immediate downward pressure on the asset and highlights the liquidity risks associated with protocol-level exploits.
Harmony acknowledged the incident directly in a public statement, confirming that it is coordinating with its internal engineering team and relevant cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze the stolen funds. The network's developers are currently working on a software patch and evaluating potential options for rolling back the blockchain's state.
The specific technical vulnerability that allowed the unauthorized minting remains under active investigation and has not yet been disclosed to the public. For institutional and retail investors, the lack of an immediate root-cause analysis prolongs uncertainty regarding the underlying security of the proof-of-stake architecture.
This latest incident revives serious questions about the network's security infrastructure following a catastrophic breach just a few years ago. In June 2022, the project's Horizon cross-chain bridge was compromised, resulting in the theft of nearly $100 million in Ethereum and various stablecoins.
Security researchers later determined that the 2022 bridge hack stemmed from a compromise of the network's multi-signature wallet. By January 2023, the Federal Bureau of Investigation formally attributed that attack to the Lazarus Group and APT 38, which are state-backed cybercriminal organizations operating out of North Korea.
Harmony originally launched its mainnet in 2019, marketing itself to developers and investors as a faster, more cost-effective alternative to Ethereum. The ONE token functions as the native asset for the ecosystem, facilitating transaction fee payments, network staking, and decentralized governance.
