NEAR Intents suspended operations on Thursday following a security breach that resulted in the loss of $3.8 million. The vulnerability existed in the layer responsible for fund transfers and its interaction with the primary contract holding user assets.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT tracked the stolen funds to the KuCoin exchange, where they were converted into bitcoin. The project team has notified law enforcement and intends to publish a comprehensive report regarding the incident.
Core services were restored within approximately one hour after the contract-side vulnerability was patched. Deposits and withdrawals across 11 networks, including BNB Chain, Polygon, and Optimism, remained suspended for an additional 12 hours to complete the fix.
The project team has committed to fully reimbursing all affected users. Prior to the incident, NEAR Intents had processed over $30 billion in swaps across 35 different networks.
Following the news, the price of NEAR fell nearly 9% to $4.86. Shares of the recently launched Bitwise NEAR ETF also declined by more than 7% during the same period.
