Source snapshot: November 5, 2026, at 13:36:06 UTC+8. This article reflects the proposal’s status at that time, before the scheduled governance discussion.
Polymarket and Binance proposed a Polygon PoS hard fork that would remove approximately 70.49 million POL from five frozen attacker addresses and credit equivalent balances to designated recovery addresses, according to Odaily’s report by Golem.
The proposal raised a question beyond recovering stolen funds: should network governance be able to reassign balances without the affected addresses’ private-key signatures? At publication, the proposal remained unresolved, and Odaily reported no public position from Polygon’s official channels, relevant governance-call participants or core developers.
What the proposed fork would change
The proposed state adjustment would set the specified attacker addresses’ POL balances to zero and credit the same amount to recovery addresses designated by Polymarket and Binance. Total POL supply would remain unchanged.
Odaily initially valued the funds at approximately $6.7 million, but later used approximately $6.5 million. The source did not reconcile those estimates.
The proposal followed two security incidents on October 30, 2026. According to the report, attackers compromised Polymarket’s front end and a Binance hot wallet. Polygon validators responded by freezing:
- Four addresses associated with the Polymarket incident, holding 23.86 million POL.
- One address associated with the Binance incident, holding 46.63 million POL.
Those freezes prevented the attackers from moving the affected assets, but did not return them. Polymarket sought cooperation from the attacker without receiving a response. According to the proposal as described by Odaily, an attacker also contacted Polygon validators and offered cash in exchange for unfreezing addresses.
The report linked that attempted inducement to the decision to seek a hard fork. Polymarket and Binance were scheduled to present their case at the Polygon Protocol Governance Call (PPGC) on November 5 at 22:30 Beijing time.
Freezing funds is not the same as reassigning them
The central distinction is between restricting an address’s transactions and changing its balance through a protocol-level intervention.
A freeze prevents movement while leaving the recorded balance in place. The proposed fork would go further: it would remove balances from specified addresses and recreate them elsewhere without the original holders’ signatures. For users assessing Polygon’s trust assumptions, the question is therefore not only whether assets can be frozen, but under what circumstances governance may authorize their reassignment.
Polymarket and Binance emphasized that the intervention would apply only to the specific addresses involved in these two incidents. They said it should neither become routine nor establish a general Polygon asset-freezing and recovery mechanism.
Odaily’s author nevertheless argued that a one-off exception could create expectations that other projects would seek similar treatment after future attacks. That is an assessment of precedent risk, not a reported governance outcome.
Who would benefit—and what remained uncertain
According to Odaily, both Polymarket and Binance had already fully compensated affected users from their own funds. The proposed recovery would therefore help the companies recoup losses rather than provide compensation still owed to those users.
The author judged rejection more likely, arguing that Polygon would bear reputational risks without a clear corresponding gain in network revenue, users or ecosystem competitiveness. The report also noted that the affected 70.49 million POL represented less than 1% of circulating supply and argued that even a complete sale would have little material effect on Polygon’s price, staking, gas costs or broader ecosystem. Those impact judgments were the author’s analysis, not demonstrated outcomes.
The report left room for approval, citing Polymarket’s relationship with Polygon and Binance’s influence.
Earlier recovery forks offer context, not an outcome
Odaily compared the proposal with two earlier interventions:
- Ethereum’s 2016 DAO fork: The report described the theft of approximately 3.6 million ETH, then worth more than $50 million, and put that amount at approximately 14% of ETH supply at the time. It said the recovery fork redirected funds to a refund contract, while opponents continued the original chain as Ethereum Classic (ETC). The episode illustrated the conflict between “code is law” and intervention through social consensus.
- Core Network’s November 2, 2026 fork: Following the unauthorized withdrawal of approximately 97 million CORE staked through b14g on October 31, the network announced a one-time state adjustment recovering 68,146,177.22 CORE from three attacker-controlled addresses—approximately 70.2% of the affected amount.
The author argued that those cases differed from Polygon’s situation because of their network significance and the affected projects’ capacity to cover losses.
At the source’s publication time, the documented stage was still a proposed recovery fork awaiting governance discussion—not an approved or completed balance adjustment.
Original reporting: Odaily — Golem, November 5, 2026.