NEAR Intents Issues 48-Hour Ultimatum to Hacker Behind Stolen Funds

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain settlement platform tied to the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, has issued a 48-hour ultimatum to a hacker it claims to have identified following an exploit that resulted in stolen funds. The protocol has publicly demanded the return of assets within that window.

The claim that the team has identified the attacker carries weight in a sector where blockchain analytics firms have become increasingly capable of tracing on-chain fund movements, even when attackers attempt to launder stolen assets through mixers or cross-chain bridges.

NEAR Protocol supports a growing decentralized finance ecosystem tracked on DeFiLlama, where total value locked figures provide context for the potential scale of any exploit. Until NEAR Intents publishes a post-mortem with on-chain evidence, independent verification of the stolen amount is not possible.