$50M Bitget Hack Attempts Spark Debate Over NEAR Intents' Permissionless Claim

NEAR Intents' claim to be 'permissionless' has been put to the test after it blocked over $50 million in Bitget hacker swaps.

The hackers who stole $388 million from Bitget tried to move more than $50 million through NEAR Intents, a service that lets users exchange assets across different blockchains. The protocol's 'SHIELD' system detected deviations in flows and froze $503,000 midway through the transaction. About $166,000 passed through.

NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko said the restricted funds will remain on hold pending legal and recovery proceedings. He stated that NEAR Intents processes over $100 million in cross-chain trading volume daily, but in this case, only a 'negligible fraction' of the hacked funds were flowing through them.

This approach has drawn criticism online, with some questioning whether a service that can hold funds should describe itself as permissionless. NEAR Cofounder Illia Polosukhin defended the approach, stating that 'permissionless means nobody needs permission to own and transfer assets' on the blockchain.