Polygon is considering an extraordinary intervention that could return approximately 70.49 million POL, worth an estimated $6.5 million, to Binance and Polymarket following separate security incidents. A Polygon Improvement Proposal published on November 4 calls for a coordinated hard fork of the Polygon PoS mainnet to move the tokens from five attacker-controlled addresses into recovery wallets verified by the affected platforms.
The proposal was submitted by Parvez, a member of the Polygon Labs Validator Support Team. It identifies approximately 23.86 million POL associated with the Polymarket incident and another 46.63 million POL linked to Binance. The valuation uses POL’s October 29 price of approximately $0.0924, rather than a current market price.
The affected tokens are already restricted from moving after Polygon’s block producers added the five addresses to Bor’s transaction block list. However, this measure only prevents certain transactions and does not provide a mechanism for returning the assets to their owners. The proposed hard fork would address that limitation.
The proposal is scheduled for presentation during the Polygon Protocol Governance Call on November 5 at 14:30 UTC. If governance approves the plan, developers estimate that client implementation and testnet rehearsals could take approximately two weeks before a mainnet activation is considered.
How Polygon Plans to Recover the 70.49 Million POL
The proposed mechanism would operate at a predetermined block height. At that point, the network would set the POL balances of the five identified attacker addresses to zero and credit equivalent amounts to recovery wallets designated by Polymarket and Binance. The operation would be restricted to the specified native POL balances.
Polymarket’s portion covers four addresses holding approximately 23.86 million POL, while Binance’s portion involves one address containing approximately 46.63 million POL. These balances represent the assets identified in the proposal, rather than the total value of everything affected by the two security incidents.
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An important feature is that the recovery would not increase POL’s total supply. The tokens would effectively change ownership through a consensus-level modification rather than being newly issued. Other tokens, including the USDT associated with the Binance incident, are outside the proposed recovery mechanism. Tether has already frozen the USDT balance.
The proposal also requires Binance and Polymarket to demonstrate control of their designated recovery wallets before activation. Polygon Labs would verify ownership through signed messages or another suitable method, while the affected platforms would provide written confirmation that the addresses belong to them.
Polygon Faces a Significant Governance and Decentralization Test
The justification for the hard fork is that the existing blocklist is operationally fragile. Its restrictions depend on block producers maintaining and loading the relevant configuration, and the mechanism does not provide a permanent way to return the funds. The proposal argues that leaving approximately 70 million POL indefinitely locked is not a satisfactory long-term solution.
However, recovering stolen assets through a hard fork raises an important question about blockchain immutability. If a network can modify balances after a theft, users and institutions may question where the boundary lies between legitimate emergency intervention and discretionary control over funds. Polygon’s proposal attempts to address this concern by limiting the operation to five identified addresses and two publicly acknowledged incidents.
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The document describes the intervention as an exceptional measure that should not become a standard recovery mechanism. It sets out conditions including public acknowledgment of the theft, on-chain evidence connecting the funds to the victims, restrictions applied by all block producers, and formal requests from the affected parties. It also rejects introducing a permanent, general-purpose mechanism that would give the protocol broad authority to recover user funds.
If approved, the proposal will require coordinated updates across Polygon clients, validators, RPC providers and blockchain explorers. The Amoy testnet will be used for rehearsals before any mainnet activation, with the final balances to be checked again ahead of the fork.
For Binance and Polymarket, the proposal offers a possible route to recover substantial assets without relying on the attackers’ cooperation. For Polygon, however, the decision carries implications beyond the $6.5 million involved. The governance process will test whether the network can respond to exceptional security incidents while maintaining confidence in its rules, validator coordination and commitment to decentralized infrastructure.
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