Near Intents halts service after $3.8 million exploit

Near Intents stopped service on Thursday after an attacker drained about $3.8 million from the cross-blockchain swap tool. The team said a bug in the interaction between its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure and its main smart contract caused the incident. Near Intents said it had reported the incident to law enforcement. The team said it was working with security and blockchain analytics partners to trace the funds and pursue recovery. Two days earlier, Near Intents blocked a $50 million swap attempt by the hacker who stole around $387.5 million from Bitget last week. It is unclear whether the two incidents are related. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic identified North Korea as a likely culprit in the Bitget hack, but that attribution has not been confirmed. Bitwise's Near ETF launched two days before the Near Intents incident. NEAR, the network's native token, fell 8.93% to $4.86 today. Shares of the ETF dropped more than 7%. Bitwise first filed paperwork for the fund in April 2025, when NEAR traded at $2.61. The token has almost doubled since then. Near Intents said it had patched the smart contract vulnerability and expected core services to resume within about an hour. The team said deposits and withdrawals on 11 networks, including BNB Chain, Polygon and Optimism, would remain unavailable for roughly 12 more hours while it completed the Omni fixes. Near Intents pledged to compensate the lost funds in full. Near Intents has handled more than $30 billion in swaps across 35 blockchains. The service lets competing market makers quote prices to fill users' swap orders. A 2022 hack of the Harmony bridge resulted in the loss of about $100 million. Near Intents has not disclosed whose funds were taken. Crypto balances do not carry bank-style deposit insurance. Near Intents said it would publish a detailed report in the coming days.