Harmony ONE’s Mint Attack Isn’t the First. Here’s What Happened to Other Projects Hit by Similar Attacks
Harmony’s ONE token is having a moment crypto investors know all too well: a major exploit, a sudden supply shock and a market rushing to price in the worst.
Around 4 billion ONE tokens were reportedly minted without authorization, representing roughly 26% of the token’s supply. About 2.8 billion ONE were subsequently sent to exchanges, putting the token under heavy selling pressure.
ONE has already crashed more than 30%.
But the bigger story isn’t the crash itself.
It is whether Harmony can prevent this exploit from becoming a permanent loss of confidence.
Crypto history offers some surprisingly useful clues.
Not Every Mint Attack Kills a Token
Unauthorized minting has destroyed some projects, but others have managed to recover — even after attacks worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Take Wormhole.
In February 2022, an attacker created around 120,000 unbacked WETH, worth roughly $320 million. On paper, it looked devastating. But Jump Crypto stepped in and replaced the missing ETH within about 24 hours.
The result? The peg held, users were made whole and Wormhole survived.
BNB Chain faced another enormous incident later that year. Around 2 million BNB were minted through an exploit in its Token Hub. Validators stopped the chain, patched the vulnerability and froze most of the affected funds.
Gala Games followed a similar playbook in 2024. An attacker minted 5 billion GALA worth more than $200 million. The affected wallet was frozen quickly, 4.4 billion tokens were burned and the project managed to contain the damage.
More recently, Echo Protocol faced an unauthorized mint in May 2026. The team regained control of the affected keys, burned the remaining illicit tokens and added minting limits.
The lesson from these survivors is pretty clear:
Fast action can matter more than the headline size of the exploit.
Then There Is the Other Side
Cover Protocol didn’t get that second chance.
After roughly 40 quintillion COVER tokens were minted in December 2020, the token collapsed around 97%. Even the return of funds couldn’t restore confidence, and the project eventually wound down.
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Cashio suffered an even more dramatic outcome. Roughly 2 billion fake CASH tokens were created in March 2022, sending the stablecoin toward zero.
BonqDAO also never recovered after an exploit involving roughly $120 million worth of BEUR and wALBT.
These projects highlight the real danger of a mint attack.
The problem isn’t only stolen money. It’s trust.
Once investors stop believing that a token’s supply, security or underlying protocol can be trusted, recovery becomes much harder.
Why Harmony’s ONE Is a Bigger Problem
This is where Harmony’s situation becomes particularly uncomfortable.
ONE isn’t a wrapped asset sitting on top of another token. It is Harmony’s native Layer-1 token.
So an unauthorized mint doesn’t simply damage a side product. It raises questions about the actual supply of ONE.
And with billions of the newly minted tokens reportedly reaching exchanges, the market now has another problem: potential supply dilution and continued selling pressure.
Harmony is reportedly working with exchanges to freeze the affected funds, while a patch and possible rollback are being considered.
Those actions could become the deciding factor.
If Harmony can stop the unauthorized ONE from circulating, eliminate the vulnerability and give the market confidence that the legitimate supply is protected, the token could eventually stabilize.
But if the team cannot contain the additional supply, the market may continue treating the attack as a structural problem rather than a temporary shock.
ONE’s Recovery Depends on What Happens Next
The history of crypto exploits shows that a 30% crash doesn’t necessarily mean the end.
Wormhole, BNB Chain and Gala prove that projects can survive enormous attacks.
But Cover, Cashio and BonqDAO show the other side of the story: once trust in the core asset disappears, recovery can become almost impossible.
For Harmony, therefore, the question isn’t whether ONE has already crashed.
It’s whether the team can convince the market that the unauthorized supply is under control and that it cannot happen again.
Until that happens, ONE’s next move may depend less on broader crypto sentiment and more on what Harmony does next.
