Following the theft of $388 million from Bitget, two cross-chain swap services adopted opposing approaches to handling illicit funds. NEAR Intents, managed by Alex Shevchenko, blocked over $50 million in transfer attempts linked to the attack using its SHIELD screening system.
SHIELD successfully froze $503,000 mid-transaction, while approximately $166,000 bypassed the filter. The system utilizes AML data from providers including TRM Labs, AMLBot, PureFi, and Binance. NEAR processes over $100 million in daily volume, making the blocked amount a small fraction of its total activity.
In contrast, THORChain processed $6.3 million in swaps connected to the stolen funds and refused Bitget's request to blacklist the involved addresses. The protocol maintains that it is permissionless by design and does not censor transactions, citing previous instances where its own vaults were targeted without subsequent blacklisting.
Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether also intervened, freezing $320,000 in USDC and USDT associated with the breach. NEAR currently holds the intercepted $503,000, awaiting legal recovery processes via the Kodex portal, while having waived any potential recovery bounty offered by Bitget.
The situation has sparked debate regarding the definition of permissionless infrastructure. While NEAR defines its model as permissionless with boundaries, critics argue that the ability to freeze funds introduces centralized control. The lack of a formal remedy process for wrongly flagged users remains a point of contention.
