NEAR Intents Hit with $3.8 Million Exploit, Deposits and Withdrawals Suspended

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap layer in the NEAR protocol, has confirmed an exploit of over $3.8 million on October 1, 2026. The team halted deposits and withdrawals on eleven networks, including BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, and TON, while promising full reimbursement of affected funds.

The exploit occurred due to a fault in the interaction between the Omni system for deposits and withdrawals and the NEAR Intents smart contract. The Omni system is responsible for accepting deposits from external blockchains and releasing withdrawals back to them. The Intents level above it decides what happens to the balance.

A hot wallet on BNB Chain attributed to NEAR Intents was the source of the irregular outflows, which were then swapped into Bitcoin on the KuCoin exchange. The project has reported the incident to law enforcement and brought in security and analytics firms to follow the funds further.

The suspension of deposits and withdrawals means that users who had swaps in progress may see their balances stuck on these networks. The project advises users to be cautious and not to leave their balances in the swap layer for an extended period.