NEAR Intents loses $3.8 million to smart contract exploit

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain trading platform linked to the NEAR Protocol blockchain, lost about $3.8 million to a smart contract exploit on Thursday (October 1), forcing it to pause deposits and withdrawals across eleven networks. The breach adds to a string of major 2024 crypto hacks that includes a $350 million exploit at Bitget just last week, according to DefiLlama data.

• NEAR Intents paused deposits and withdrawals on eleven networks, including BNB Smart Chain, Polygon and Optimism.
• The platform has processed more than $30 billion in volume across 35 blockchains since launch, per its website.
• Investigator ZachXBT said the stolen funds moved through KuCoin and were converted into bitcoin.

• $3.8M Funds lost in the NEAR Intents Omni system exploit
• $30B Total trading volume NEAR Intents has processed across 35 chains
• $350M Bitget exploit last week, nearly 100 times the NEAR Intents loss
• 6% NEAR token’s 24-hour price drop after the exploit was disclosed

NEAR Intents, a cross-chain trading platform associated with the NEAR Protocol blockchain, suffered a security exploit on Thursday (October 1) that resulted in roughly $3.8 million in losses, according to reporting by CoinDesk. The platform paused services and temporarily disabled deposits and withdrawals on several blockchains while it investigated the breach. NEAR Intents said the vulnerability has since been patched and pledged to reimburse affected users in full.

$3.8 million exploit traced to a bug in NEAR Intents’ Omni system

NEAR Intents attributed the exploit to a flaw in how its Omni deposit and withdrawal system interacted with its smart contract. The project said in a post on X that the contract-side vulnerability has been patched and that all affected funds will be reimbursed in full.

NEAR Intents reported the incident to law enforcement. It is also working with security and blockchain analytics firms to trace the stolen funds.

A $350 million Bitget breach last week extends crypto’s rough quarter

The NEAR Intents exploit follows a string of larger incidents this year. Exchange Bitget was hit with an exploit resulting in more than $350 million in stolen assets just last week, while Liquid Network, Drift and Kelp each lost roughly $320 million, $295 million and $293 million respectively, according to DefiLlama tracking.

NEAR Intents itself is designed to simplify cross-chain trading. Rather than choosing a bridge, exchange or route manually, users specify the swap they want, and independent market makers known as solvers compete to complete it. The platform’s website states it has processed more than $30 billion in volume across 35 blockchains since launch, a figure that dwarfs Thursday’s $3.8 million loss.

NEAR token falls 6% as investigators trace funds to KuCoin

NEAR, the native token closely associated with NEAR Intents, fell about 6% over the 24 hours following the disclosure, trading near $4.8451.

The disclosed vulnerability involved NEAR Intents’ cross-chain infrastructure rather than the underlying NEAR Protocol blockchain itself.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said the exploit began with irregular withdrawals from a BNB Chain hot wallet linked to NEAR Intents. He said the stolen funds were then sent to crypto exchange KuCoin and bridged into bitcoin, which traded at $84,012.80 at the time of writing.

NEAR Intents’ status page showed deposits and withdrawals still unavailable on BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, X Layer, ADI, Scroll and Plasma, even as core services were expected to resume quickly.

The BlockWest read. The real test here is not the $3.8 million loss but whether NEAR Intents’ full-reimbursement pledge holds up once security firms finish tracing funds routed through KuCoin. Solver-based cross-chain routing is pitched to institutions as a way to avoid manual bridge risk, but this incident shows the smart contract layer itself remains a single point of failure. Allocators weighing intents-based infrastructure against traditional bridges should watch whether the reimbursement is completed in full and how fast remaining chains reopen.

NEAR Intents has not published a timeline for restoring deposits and withdrawals on the eleven affected networks, and the security firms tracing the KuCoin-routed funds have not yet disclosed findings beyond ZachXBT’s initial account. Whether the pledged full reimbursement is completed, and whether law enforcement recovers any of the bitcoin-converted funds, remains the open question for the platform’s users.

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