Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is preparing to take extreme measures to seize illicit assets. Polygon Labs Validator Support Team member Parvez03 submitted a coordinated hard fork proposal on Nov. 4, 2026, to return 70.49 million POL to victims of the Binance and Polymarket hacks.
The stolen funds are valued at approximately $6.5 million based on a POL benchmark price of $0.0924 as of Oct. 29, 2026. This value stems from two separate incidents: the Polymarket exploit involving 23.86 million POL across four wallets, and the Binance breach holding 46.63 million POL in a single wallet.
Four Polygon block producers have already added the five hacker addresses to a transaction blocklist. While this measure keeps the tokens from moving, it lacks any mechanism to return the assets to their original owners.
The manual blocklist has also placed an operational burden on the network. Validators must restart their software whenever the list is updated, leaving the stolen funds frozen without resolution.
219,450 POL Transaction Fee Offer and Bribery Allegations
Previous efforts to resolve the situation amicably yielded no results. Polymarket attempted to contact the hacker through on-chain recovery channels, but the perpetrator did not respond.
Instead, the attacker tried to move the looted assets. On Oct. 30, 2026, the hacker attempted to transfer the funds by offering a transaction fee of around 219,450 POL. In addition to putting forward high network fees, the perpetrator reportedly approached validators with cash bribe offers to include the transaction in a block.
How the Hard Fork Mechanism Works
Seeing the deadlock with the blocklist approach, Parvez03’s proposal offers direct intervention at the ledger level. This mechanism operates without minting new POL, leaving the token’s total supply unchanged.
At a designated future block, the consensus system will wipe all balances from the five blocked addresses. Concurrently, the 70.49 million POL will be directly credited to verified recovery wallets belonging to Binance and Polymarket.
Limits of Consensus Changes Without Private Keys
This forced recovery move raises fundamental questions for network governance. Altering account balances without a private key signature from the perpetrator means changing the consensus rules that have bound all validators.
Parvez03 himself conceded in the proposal that the measure is extreme. He stated that ledger intervention should not be repeated frequently, as modifying ledger consensus rules without the perpetrator’s private key alters standard network guarantees.
The final decision now rests with validators and the community. The hard fork plan is scheduled to be discussed during the Polygon Protocol Governance Call on Nov. 5, 2026, before any implementation is finalized.
For the Polygon ecosystem, the Nov. 5 call will test the limits of decentralization: whether recovering $6.5 million justifies direct ledger intervention.
Reported by crypto.news.
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Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Cryptocurrency assets are highly volatile and carry significant risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
