Harmony, a layer-1 blockchain once billed as an Ethereum rival, has proposed shutting itself down, saying threats from AI agents and state actors have grown too great, Decrypt's Jason Nelson reported.
The announcement comes after Harmony confirmed an exploit in August in which an attacker minted roughly 4 billion unauthorized ONE tokens. The team has proposed shifting its efforts to a venture it calls "The Remix Economy for AI Video."
"Our community has been resilient through attacks and changes, but it is time to fully sunset the Harmony network," the team wrote on X.
The Harmony blockchain launched its main network in 2019, claiming the mantle of a "fast and secure blockchain" with a mission to "scale trust for billions of people and create a radically fair economy," according to project documentation on Medium.
Shooting star goes dim
The project was led by Stephen Tse, a Ph.D. recipient from the University of Pennsylvania who went on to work as an engineer at Google and Apple.
"We are a team of infrastructure engineers in Silicon Valley, including 4 PhD, 7 ex-Google/Amazon/Apple/Facebook, 2 Harvard MBA, and Stanford/Berkeley AI graduates," according to the Medium post.
The project raised a combined $28.8 million from a private fundraising, node round and launchpad sale. Harmony's ONE token shot to a market value of more than $4 billion at its late-2021 peak, according to CoinGecko.
The token now has a market cap of $10.4 million.