Decentralized Swap Services Face Scrutiny After Bitget Hack
The recent $388 million Bitget hack highlighted the vulnerability of cross-chain swap services to stolen funds. Two major players, NEAR Intents and THORChain, handled funds from the same theft in the same week but responded differently. NEAR blocked more than $50 million in attempted transfers linked to the attack, while THORChain processed around $6.3 million in ether-to-bitcoin swaps from a wallet tied to the attack.
NEAR's screening system, SHIELD, froze about $503,000 mid-transaction and approximately $166,000 passed through before detection caught up. The service's ordinary business processes more than $100 million daily, with refusals being a negligible fraction of its volume.
THORChain's decision not to block the addresses involved sparked controversy in the industry. While some champions of decentralization support the decision, key names from the broader industry have pushed back. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen wrote that decentralization 'is a design principle, not a shield for facilitating known stolen funds.'