A vulnerability in NEAR Intents’ cross-chain infrastructure resulted in roughly $3.8 million in losses Thursday, leading the protocol to suspend services and disable deposits and withdrawals on multiple networks.
NEAR Intents said it plans to reimburse affected users in full.
The protocol attributed the incident to a bug in the interaction between its Omni deposit and withdrawal system and a NEAR Intents smart contract. The contract vulnerability has now been patched, according to the project.
Exploit Targets Cross-Chain Infrastructure
NEAR Intents is a cross-chain trading protocol designed to simplify token swaps across different networks. Users specify the trade they want instead of manually selecting a bridge, exchange or transaction route. Independent market makers, known as solvers, then compete to execute those trades.
The platform reports more than $30 billion in cumulative volume across 35 blockchains.
NEAR Intents said the disclosed vulnerability affected its cross-chain infrastructure rather than the underlying NEAR Protocol blockchain.
NEAR, the ecosystem’s native token, was down about 6% over the preceding 24 hours at roughly $4.94 when the report was published.
Attack Comes During Heavy Crypto Hack Activity
The exploit adds another major security incident to an already difficult year for the cryptocurrency sector.
Bitget suffered an exploit last week that resulted in more than $350 million in stolen assets. DefiLlama data also lists several other large incidents, including approximately $320 million involving Liquid Network, $295 million at Drift and $293 million at Kelp.
NEAR Intents said it has notified law enforcement and is working with blockchain analytics and cybersecurity firms to track the funds involved in the attack.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said the attacker initially made unusual withdrawals from a NEAR Intents-linked hot wallet on BNB Chain. The stolen assets were later transferred to KuCoin and subsequently bridged into Bitcoin, according to the investigator.
Deposits and Withdrawals Remain Restricted
NEAR Intents said it expected its core services to come back online relatively soon, but warned that deposits and withdrawals on some networks would take longer to restore as additional remediation work continued.
Its status page reported disruptions involving BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, X Layer, ADI, Scroll and Plasma.
The protocol said the vulnerable contract has been secured and reiterated that losses linked to the incident will be fully reimbursed as it continues investigating the attack and tracing the affected funds.
