NEAR Intents Hacked for $3.8 Million After New ETF Launch
The exploit hit the cross-chain swap service, not the NEAR mainchain itself. The incident comes shortly after Bitwise launched the first U.S. spot NEAR ETF.
Key Takeaways
- NEAR Intents lost about $3.8 million in an exploit in the Omni deposit and withdrawal system.
- The NEAR token fell 8.6%, while the NEAR mainchain was not the target, according to the article.
- NEAR Intents has patched the bug, promised compensation, and reported the incident to police and authorities.
NEAR Intents, the cross-chain swap service on NEAR Protocol, has been hit by an exploit that caused about $3.8 million (€3.3 million) in losses. The NEAR token fell 8.6% within a few hours, while the underlying blockchain network itself was not named as the target.
What Went Wrong
According to the team, the bug was in the way the Omni deposit and withdrawal system worked with the NEAR Intents smart contract. That contract automatically records every swap. On-chain investigator ZachXBT also reported that the hot wallet on BNB Chain showed several unusual outflows before transaction processing stopped.
According to ZachXBT, the stolen funds were sent directly to crypto exchange KuCoin and converted there into Bitcoin. NEAR Intents says it has now patched the bug and will fully compensate affected users. The incident has also been reported to police and other authorities.
What This Means for NEAR
The hack came two days after Bitwise launched the first U.S. spot NEAR ETF. Bitwise partly built that listed fund structure around NEAR Intents, which the company says has already processed more than $32 billion (€28.2 billion) in swaps. For investors, the main point is that the incident appears to center on the swap service and the BNB Chain wallet, not a direct attack on the NEAR mainchain itself.
That leaves the bigger question of how resilient the broader infrastructure around NEAR really is. The token was trading around $4.92 (€4.33), with a market value of nearly $6.4 billion (€5.6 billion). In September, NEAR had already climbed about 175% ahead of the ETF launch. The attack also fits into a broader wave of major crypto infrastructure incidents; many recent hacks are about keys and operational weak spots rather than the underlying network itself.
More Pressure on Security
This is not the first major setback in the NEAR ecosystem this year. Earlier, Rhea Finance lost $7.6 million (€6.7 million) in April. NEAR Intents says it will release a full technical report in the coming days, while deposits and withdrawals on 11 networks will remain paused for about 12 more hours.
