In a stunning improvement, Polygon has proposed a significant community improve to recover roughly 70.49 million POL tokens, price round $6.5 million. These had been these tokens that had been stolen throughout two separate safety incidents involving Polymarket and Binance in October 2026.
The proposal goals to transfer the stolen tokens from 5 attacker-controlled wallets into restoration wallets designated by the compromised firms.
Remarking on which the staff famous,
5 attacker-controlled addresses maintain about 70.49M POL: about 23.86M POL (4 addresses) from the Polymarket incident and about 46.63M POL (1 tackle) from the Binance incident. The funds can’t transfer, however nothing in the present setup lets them be returned both.
Things Polygon wants to do
Polygon’s block producers have already added these addresses to their transaction blocklists. This they did to stop the attackers from shifting the funds additional. However, this measure solely freezes the belongings, and it doesn’t return them to their precise homeowners.
The current system additionally requires block producers to restart their infrastructure each time blocklist modifications are made, making it troublesome to preserve these restrictions over time.
Hence, to tackle this concern, Polygon has proposed a hard fork, which is a significant community improve that modifications the blockchain’s underlying guidelines.
Under the proposal, at a predetermined block, the POL balances of the 5 recognized wallets can be lowered to zero. The similar quantities would then be credited to restoration addresses verified and designated by Polymarket and Binance.
However, for this plan to succeed, the proposal additionally requires each firms to show possession of their designated restoration addresses earlier than the improve. If permitted, builders will first implement and take a look at the modifications on Polygon’s Amoy testnet earlier than deploying them on mainnet.
At the identical time, validators, exchanges, and node operators will even want to improve their software program earlier than activation.
However, the proposal has raised vital questions on decentralization and consumer possession.
The purple flag in query
Normally, blockchain transactions can’t be reversed or pockets balances moved with out the proprietor’s non-public keys. But Polygon’s proposed intervention would override this precept via a consensus-level change.
However, the community argued,
It is an excessive motion that shouldn’t be reproduced generally.
This comes because the Polygon’s MATIC was buying and selling at $0.098 after a hike of two.08% in the previous 24 hours.
But with 21Shares recently withdrawing roughly $11 million price of POL from Coinbase over the previous 30 days, together with 45.7 million POL price $4.08 million on twenty eighth October, considerations stay.
Final Summary
- As of now, Polygon’s block producers have already added these addresses to their transaction blocklists.
- But at the identical time, the proposal has additionally raised vital questions on decentralization and consumer possession.
