NEAR Intents Hacked for $3.8 Million Amid NEAR Token Price Drop

A cross-chain swap service built on NEAR Protocol, called NEAR Intents, has been hacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $3.8 million. The NEAR token price fell by 8.6% following the incident, although the NEAR Protocol itself was not affected. NEAR Intents allows users to swap tokens between different blockchains, with market makers competing to fill the trade. The team behind NEAR Intents identified a bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal system that interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract, which was the root cause of the loss.

The incident occurred just two days after the launch of the first US spot NEAR exchange-traded fund (ETF) by Bitwise. Bitwise had touted NEAR Intents as a key feature of the fund, citing its ability to process over $32 billion in swaps. NEAR Intents has promised to compensate affected users in full and has reported the incident to law enforcement.

The hack is the second major exploit in the NEAR ecosystem this year, following a $7.6 million loss by Rhea Finance in April. NEAR Intents has pledged to release a full technical report in the coming days.