Polygon is considering a hard fork proposal that would move around 70.49 million POL stolen in separate security incidents involving Polymarket and Binance back to recovery wallets designated by the two platforms.
The proposal calls for Polygon PoS validators to approve a coordinated network upgrade that would set the balances of five attacker-controlled addresses to zero and credit the same amounts to verified recovery addresses. The funds are currently blocked from moving, but Polygon said the existing block list does not provide a way to return them to their rightful owners.
New Hard Fork Proposal
The incidents took place on October 29 and 30, with roughly 23.86 million POL linked to the Polymarket incident and another 46.63 million POL connected to Binance. Following requests from the affected platforms, all validator-elected block producers added the identified addresses to their Bor transaction block lists. While this stopped the funds from moving, Polygon describes the arrangement as a stopgap rather than a permanent solution.
The block lists are read only when a block producer starts up, which essentially means that every update requires a deployment and a Bor restart or span rotation. The filtering mechanism also leaves room for potential bypass attempts, as it does not cover every possible transaction path.
Polygon also pointed to an attempted transaction involving a fee of around 219,450 POL and an alleged approach to validators offering cash in exchange for help unblocking a transaction. Under the proposal, the balances of four Polymarket-linked addresses and one Binance-linked address would be transferred at a fixed block height.
Both platforms will have to prove control of their respective recovery addresses and confirm in writing that they are authorized to receive the funds.
Other Tokens Excluded
The proposal only covers native POL held at the five listed addresses, while other tokens remain outside its scope. Binance’s stolen USDT has already been frozen by Tether, so the proposed fork will not touch it. Polygon also makes clear that this is an extreme measure and should not become common practice or establish a general mechanism for freezing and recovering user funds.
Before the change reaches mainnet, it must pass the Polygon governance process, undergo development and testing on Amoy, and receive the required validator support.
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