The cross-chain swap service NEAR Intents suffered a security breach resulting in the loss of $3.8 million. The incident occurred on Thursday, triggered by a bug in the interaction between the Omni deposit and withdrawal system and the platform's smart contract. Following the detection of the exploit, the team suspended services across 11 networks, including BNB Chain, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, X Layer, ADI, Scroll, and Plasma.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT identified that the attacker drained funds from a hot wallet on the BNB Chain. The stolen assets were transferred to the KuCoin exchange and converted into Bitcoin. NEAR Intents confirmed that the vulnerability has been patched and pledged to provide full compensation to affected users. The company has also initiated contact with law enforcement agencies regarding the theft.
Despite the incident, reports indicate that the underlying NEAR Protocol blockchain remains secure and was not the target of the attack. The breach occurred just two days after Bitwise launched the first US spot NEAR exchange-traded fund, which highlighted NEAR Intents as a key component that has processed over $32 billion in swaps. The NEAR token price dropped 8.6% following the news of the exploit.
This event marks the second significant security incident within the NEAR ecosystem this year, following a $7.6 million loss at Rhea Finance in April. NEAR Intents has announced plans to release a comprehensive technical report in the near future. At the time of the report, the NEAR token was trading at $4.92, with a total market capitalization of approximately $6.4 billion.
