Polygon: a hard fork to recover 70.5 million POL stolen in the Binance and Polymarket hacks

Polygon has proposed an exceptional hard fork to recover 70.5 million POL tokens (worth roughly $30 million at recent prices) stranded in attacker-controlled addresses following the late-October exploits of Binance and Polymarket. The tokens were drained during the two platform breaches and remain locked because the attackers' addresses cannot sign transactions on their own. Polygon is framing the fork as an extreme measure, since it would alter chain state to redirect the funds rather than relying on private key recovery. The move matters because it tests the network's willingness to intervene in ledger outcomes, echoing debates over immutability set off by Ethereum's 2016 DAO fork. What to watch next is validator and community approval of the fork, and whether the recovery sets a precedent for future exploit responses across Polygon-based protocols.