Overview
- Two late-October security incidents left roughly 70.49 million POL in five attacker-controlled Polygon addresses after separate compromises tied to Polymarket and a Binance hot wallet on October 29 and 30.
- A Polygon Improvement Proposal filed November 4 would set the five attacker balances to zero and credit equivalent amounts to verified recovery wallets without changing POL’s total supply.
- The proposal requires Binance and Polymarket to prove control of designated recovery addresses and calls the change an exceptional, one-off action rather than a new recovery power for the protocol.
- The plan is under discussion at the governance call on November 5 and, if approved, developers expect about two weeks of client work and rehearsals on the Amoy testnet before choosing a mainnet activation block, with a chain-split risk for nodes that do not upgrade.
- Proponents say the hard fork is needed because Polygon’s current denylist is operationally fragile and attackers have tried very large-fee transactions and allegedly offered bribes to validators, while critics warn the move raises difficult precedents for blockchain immutability.