Harmony weighs a full blockchain rollback after unauthorized minting floods exchanges with billions in ONE

Harmony, the layer-1 blockchain network, has released an emergency validator patch that it says prevents further unauthorized minting of ONE, its native token. The project said it will address tokens already created in a later update, leaving their number and ultimate treatment unresolved.Harmony told validators to install v2026.1.1 on Aug. 12. The notice confirms that minting occurred but does not disclose the amount.Onchain researcher Juiceberg estimated that roughly 4 billion ONE, equal to about 26% of the supply figure used in the post, had been minted without authorization. Juiceberg also estimated that 2.8 billion ONE had reached exchanges. Harmony has not independently confirmed those figures.How the patch blocks more mintingHarmony's published code changes address two weaknesses in cross-shard receipts, which carry transaction results between parts of the network.One flaw allowed an empty signer record and a mathematically neutral aggregate signature to pass a quorum check. The verifier counted the full committee instead of the validators represented in the signer record, allowing a receipt to be accepted without the required approvals.The second flaw affected how the netwo...