Polygon Hard Fork Proposed by Binance and Polymarket to Retrieve $6.8M in Hacked Funds
Block producers on Polygon have successfully immobilized the stolen cryptocurrency, while a proposed network hard fork would enable the retrieval and restitution of funds to their rightful owners.
Two major platforms, Binance and Polymarket, have put forward a governance proposal calling for a hard fork of the Polygon blockchain network in order to retrieve roughly 70.49 million POL tokens valued at approximately $6.8 million that were taken during distinct security breaches affecting both companies.
Based on a governance proposal submitted on Wednesday, the fund recovery operation would encompass 23.86 million POL tokens valued at $2.31 million distributed across four wallet addresses connected to the security breach at Polymarket, along with 46.63 million POL tokens worth approximately $4.51 million contained in a single address tied to the Binance security incident.
The hard fork being proposed would extract the stolen cryptocurrency from the five wallet addresses under the control of the attackers and relocate them to verified recovery addresses that have been designated by both Polymarket and Binance. This operation would be executed at a specific predetermined block while maintaining the overall total supply of POL unchanged.
Block producers operating on the Polygon network have already implemented restrictions on transactions originating from the compromised addresses, effectively immobilizing the stolen cryptocurrency and preventing any movement. The proposal notes, however, that these restrictions serve only as temporary protective measures and lack the capability to restore the funds to their legitimate owners.
The recovery plan must receive governance approval and undergo comprehensive testing on Polygon's Amoy testnet prior to implementation. Discussion of the proposal is slated for Nov. 5, though no specific date has been confirmed for deploying the hard fork on the mainnet.
This proposal comes in the aftermath of Binance experiencing a record-breaking $6.3 billion security breach on Oct. 29, as well as a distinct incident where Polymarket temporarily halted its trading operations following reports that a third-party service provider had suffered a security compromise.