NEAR Intents Hit with $3.8 Million Hack: Is the Protocol Safe?

The NEAR Protocol's cross-chain swap service, NEAR Intents, suffered a significant loss of $3.8 million to an exploit on Thursday, October 1st.

The hack occurred just two days after Bitwise launched the first US spot NEAR exchange-traded fund (ETF), which partly relies on NEAR Intents for its functionality.

A bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal system interaction with the NEAR Intents smart contract is believed to be the cause of the loss, according to a preliminary report from the team.

The stolen funds were immediately transferred to crypto exchange KuCoin and converted into Bitcoin (BTC), an investigation by on-chain expert ZachXBT revealed.