Polygon’s governance is preparing to vote on a hard‑fork that would transfer 70.49 million POL tokens—valued at about $6.5 million at the October 29 price of $0.0924—out of five attacker wallets into recovery wallets controlled by Binance and Polymarket. The proposal, drafted by the two firms and posted on the Polygon Community Forum on November 4, will be discussed during Polygon’s Protocol Governance Call on November 5 at 14:30 UTC.

How the hard fork would work

According to the proposal, the fork would activate at a specific block number chosen in advance. When the network reaches that block, the new software would automatically empty the five compromised wallets and credit the same amount to the designated recovery addresses. The four wallets linked to the Polymarket breach contain roughly 23.86 million POL, while the fifth wallet associated with Binance holds about 46.63 million POL.

Requirements and timeline

Before any code change can be implemented, Binance and Polymarket must provide written proof to Polygon Labs that they control the recovery wallets. The proposal estimates a two‑week window to develop the fork code, test it on Polygon’s Amoy testnet, and integrate it into the mainnet, pending validator approval. Validators would need to restart their software to recognize the updated blocked‑address list, a step required each time a new address is added.

Context of the attacks

The stolen POL tokens were taken on October 29 after hackers breached an external script used by traders, prompting Polymarket to restrict order cancellations and later refund affected users. Binance reported a far larger loss—approximately $6.3 billion—making it the biggest crypto hack on record, according to Cryptopolitan. The attackers have continued to attempt transactions, including a pending move on October 30 that offered a fee of about 219,450 POL (roughly $20,000).

What to watch next

Polygon’s validator community will vote on the hard‑fork proposal during the upcoming governance call; a majority approval is required for the software change to proceed. Observers will also monitor whether Binance and Polymarket can satisfactorily verify ownership of the recovery wallets. Finally, the broader crypto ecosystem will gauge the precedent set by using a hard fork as a remediation tool for large‑scale token thefts.