NEAR Intents Hit by $3.8M Exploit as Crypto Hacks Continue

NEAR Intents suffered a security exploit that drained about $3.8 million on Thursday, prompting the cross-chain trading platform to suspend operations and temporarily halt deposits and withdrawals across multiple networks.

The protocol said it will fully reimburse users affected by the incident.

According to NEAR Intents, the exploit stemmed from a bug involving the interaction between its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure and the NEAR Intents smart contract. The vulnerability in the contract has since been fixed, the project said.

How NEAR Intents Works

NEAR Intents is built to simplify swaps between different blockchain networks. Rather than requiring users to select a bridge, exchange or transaction route, users specify the trade they want, while independent market makers called solvers compete to execute the transaction in the background.

The platform says it has handled more than $30 billion in trading volume across 35 blockchains.

The incident did not involve the underlying NEAR Protocol blockchain, according to the project. The vulnerability was tied to NEAR Intents’ cross-chain infrastructure.

NEAR, the native token associated with the NEAR ecosystem, was trading about 6% lower over the previous 24 hours at the time of writing, at approximately $4.94.

Exploit Adds to 2026 Crypto Security Losses

The incident comes amid a year of significant security breaches across the crypto industry.

Bitget was exploited just a week earlier, with more than $350 million in assets reportedly stolen. Other major incidents this year included attacks involving Liquid Network, with losses of about $320 million, Drift at approximately $295 million and Kelp at roughly $293 million, according to DefiLlama data.

NEAR Intents said it notified law enforcement and is cooperating with blockchain analytics and security companies to track the stolen assets.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT reported that the attack began with unusual withdrawals from a BNB Chain hot wallet associated with NEAR Intents. According to his account, the attacker subsequently transferred the assets to crypto exchange KuCoin before bridging them into Bitcoin.

Network Services Remain Partially Suspended

NEAR Intents said its core functionality was expected to return relatively quickly, although deposits and withdrawals on several supported networks would remain suspended while additional fixes were implemented.

The platform’s status page listed disruptions affecting BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, X Layer, ADI, Scroll and Plasma.

The project said the contract vulnerability had been patched and that users affected by the exploit would receive full reimbursement, while its investigation and efforts to recover the stolen funds continue.