# Polygon Proposes Hard Fork to Recover 70.5 Million Stolen POL Tokens A governance proposal seeks a hard fork to retrieve funds from two recent hacks. - **Source:** [DailyCoin](https://brifing.si/source/3e9b0f85-cb2f-40ee-ba61-db9410cf0937) - **Published:** 2026-11-05 - **Topic:** [Finance](https://brifing.si/c/finance) - **Original article:** - **On Brifing:** https://brifing.si/s/c50ef833-6482-4f13-9886-e452c65eec30 ## Governance Proposal for Recovery A member of the Polygon Labs Validator Support Team has introduced a proposal for a hard fork on the Polygon PoS mainnet. This initiative aims to recover approximately 70.49 million POL tokens stolen during security incidents on October 29 and 30, 2026, involving the platforms Polymarket and Binance. ## Scope of the Incident The stolen assets include roughly 23.86 million POL linked to the Polymarket breach and 46.63 million POL associated with the Binance incident. While block producers have successfully restricted these funds from moving across the blockchain, the current block list mechanism is considered a temporary stopgap rather than a permanent solution. ## Technical Limitations of Blocking Current restrictions require Bor transaction block lists, which necessitate network restarts or span rotations to update. This process is inefficient and leaves potential vulnerabilities, as it does not cover every transaction path. Furthermore, the attacker reportedly attempted to bribe validators with cash payments to bypass these existing security restrictions. ## Proposed Recovery Mechanism The hard fork would set the balances of five attacker-controlled addresses to zero and credit the equivalent amounts to verified recovery wallets. This coordinated transfer is scheduled to occur at a specific, fixed block height. Both Polymarket and Binance must provide written proof of authorization to receive these recovered funds. ## Governance and Development Timeline The proposal is slated for discussion during the Polygon Protocol Governance Call on November 5. If approved, developers estimate that client development and testnet rehearsals on the Amoy network will require two to three weeks. The plan explicitly guarantees that the total supply of POL tokens will remain fixed throughout. ## Exclusions and Asset Scope This recovery effort is strictly limited to the native POL tokens held at the five identified malicious addresses. Other stolen assets, such as USDT taken from Binance, are excluded from this specific hard fork, as Tether has already taken independent measures to freeze those particular funds on their own network. ## Precedent and Network Integrity Polygon emphasizes that this hard fork represents an extreme measure and should not be viewed as a standard practice for fund recovery. The network aims to avoid establishing a general mechanism for freezing user assets, maintaining that this intervention is a unique response to the specific security breaches identified. ## Future Implications for Decentralization The situation raises critical questions regarding the extent to which decentralized networks should intervene to reverse malicious transactions. As cyberattacks become more frequent, the community must balance the need for asset recovery with the core principles of blockchain immutability, ensuring that such interventions do not compromise the network's long-term decentralization. ## Sources covering this story - [DailyCoin — Polygon Proposes Hard Fork to Recover $6.5 Million in Stolen POL](https://dailycoin.com/70-5m-pol-heist-triggers-polygons-hard-fork-proposal/) - [CryptoPotato — Polygon Proposes Hard Fork to Recover Stolen POL Tokens](https://cryptopotato.com/polygon-eyes-hard-fork-to-recover-70-49-million-pol-stolen-in-polymarket-and-binance-hacks/) --- _Summary written by Brifing from the original reporting. Copyright in the original article belongs to its publisher; read the full piece at the link above._