Polygon proposal targets 70.49M POL tied to Binance, Polymarket hacks

Can Polygon return the POL stolen in the Binance and Polymarket incidents? A Polygon Labs validator-support team member has proposed a hard fork that would move about 70.49 million POL from five blocked addresses to recovery wallets designated by the two companies. The proposal is worth about $6.5 million using POL’s October 29 price.

According to the Polygon governance proposal, four addresses linked to Polymarket hold about 23.86 million POL, while one linked to Binance holds about 46.63 million. Polygon’s block producers have restricted transfers from those addresses, but the existing block list cannot return the funds. The proposal was scheduled for discussion at a governance call on November 5; it still requires approval before any fork can proceed.

How would the proposed fork move the funds?

At a specified block, the network would set each listed address’s native POL balance to zero and credit the same amount to the relevant recovery wallet. No new POL would be created, so the proposal says total supply would remain unchanged. It covers only native POL; the 6.19 million USDT sent to the Binance-linked address is outside its scope because Tether has frozen it.

The proposal also requires Binance and Polymarket to verify control of their recovery addresses and confirm in writing that they are entitled to receive the funds. The precise balances would be reread at a later snapshot block, so the reference amounts in the proposal are not necessarily the final transfer amounts. The proposal calls the intervention an exceptional measure and rejects making a general freeze-and-recover power part of the protocol.

What still has to happen before recovery?

Governance must approve the proposal, and developers would then need to build and rehearse the change on Polygon’s Amoy testnet. The proposal estimates about two weeks for development and testing after approval; it does not yet set an activation block, fork name or client release. Nodes that do not upgrade would follow a different chain after activation, according to the proposal.

Crypto.news reported that the addresses remain restricted and that the fork is still only a proposal. For you, the next marker is a governance decision: if it passes, watch for the Amoy rehearsal and the announced activation block.

References

• Polygon governance proposal — forum.polygon.technology