Key Notes
- The draft targets native POL in five addresses tied to the Binance and Polymarket incidents.
- A one-time balance transfer would leave total POL supply unchanged.
- Governance approval and Amoy testing are required before any mainnet activation.
A proposal on Polygon’s governance forum seeks a coordinated hard fork to recover roughly 70.49 million POL from five addresses linked to the Binance and Polymarket hacks, turning an existing transaction block into a possible return of funds.
The draft proposal, first posted on November 4, would set the listed addresses’ native POL balances to zero at a designated block and credit the same amounts to verified recovery wallets chosen by the two companies. It identifies Binance and Polymarket as the parties requesting the remedy.
The five addresses hold about 23.86 million POL associated with Polymarket across four wallets and 46.63 million POL associated with Binance in one wallet. The draft’s indicative $6.5 million valuation uses a price of $0.0924 per POL on October 29, rather than a current market quote.
Blocking Transfers Does Not Return the Tokens
Polygon PoS block producers have already added the addresses to the Bor transaction block list, according to the proposal. That stops covered transactions from being included, but leaves the balances under the same addresses and provides no mechanism for returning them.
The draft describes the block list as a temporary safeguard. Producers load it at startup, changes require operational coordination, and its filtering does not cover every way an account can initiate activity. The proposed recovery would instead change the network’s consensus rules.
At the fork block, the current design would transfer each listed wallet’s full native POL balance to its corresponding recovery address without an ordinary transaction signed by that wallet. Total POL supply would remain unchanged. Other tokens, bridge contracts and additional Binance addresses blocked as a precaution would remain outside the recovery sweep.
Separate Incidents, One Recovery Proposal
The Polygon balances represent one part of the wider Binance hack. CoinScreamer’s subsequent attack chronology examined Binance’s account of fake recruitment and compromised development infrastructure leading to its wallet-signing systems.
Polymarket’s incident report describes a different route: a compromised third-party monitoring script used active sessions to sell positions and move funds from some users’ wallets on October 29. The platform said it removed the script, reset sessions and arranged refunds, including compensation for losses during the trading pause.
Recovery through the fork would send POL to the companies’ designated wallets. It would not reverse the full history of either incident or establish that every stolen asset had been recovered.
Approval and Testing Still Stand Between Draft and Fork
The proposal schedules a presentation for November 5 at 14:30 UTC. It requires governance approval, proof that the recipients control their recovery addresses, refreshed balance checks and a rehearsal on the Amoy testnet. The fork name, activation block and client release remain unset; the draft views roughly two weeks after approval as workable.
The intervention is framed as an exceptional, closed-list action. Its authors reject creating a permanent general-purpose power to freeze and recover user funds, while acknowledging the risks of mistaken attribution and a chain split if operators do not upgrade. The engineering design also remains subject to confirmation.
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