NEAR Intents' SHIELD Blocks $50M in Attempted Laundering

On September 24, crypto exchange Bitget suffered a massive breach, losing $387.5 million to hackers. However, thanks to the quick reaction of NEAR Intents' compliance team and its built-in risk-intelligence layer called SHIELD, more than $50 million in attempted laundering was blocked. This is a significant achievement, especially considering that under normal conditions, NEAR Intents processes over $100 million in daily volume.

SHIELD works by gathering signals from multiple intelligence and compliance providers to identify transactions linked to known exploits, sanctioned wallets, or suspicious behavioral patterns. In this case, it flagged the stolen Bitget funds almost immediately. The protocol then redirected the majority of suspicious flows to alternative providers, effectively preventing the assets from re-entering clean circulation through NEAR Intents' infrastructure.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen publicly praised NEAR Intents for its role in disrupting the laundering process. Interestingly, NEAR Intents waived its right to a 5% bounty for freezing and recovering the identified stolen assets, which would have been a significant payday in crypto's bug bounty culture.