NEAR Intents Cross-Chain System Hit with $3.8 Million Exploit

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap system developed by NEAR Protocol's team, suspended services and froze deposits and withdrawals across eleven blockchains after detecting a security incident that cost approximately $3.8 million.

The breach was caused by a bug in the interaction between Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure and the NEAR Intents smart contract, rather than a flaw in a bridge, which is what the system aimed to eliminate.

NEAR Intents said the contract-side vulnerability has been patched, and the team will provide full reimbursement for affected users. Deposits and withdrawals on various blockchains, including BSC, Polygon, TON, Optimism, and Avalanche, were suspended for about 12 hours while the team worked with security firms to track the funds.

The stolen funds moved to KuCoin and were converted into bitcoin, according to blockchain investigator ZachXBT. NEAR Intents stated that it has already cooperated with law enforcement and blockchain analytics firms, with a full post-mortem expected in the coming days.