Newsletter

• Near Intents Services will be suspended on Thursday due to a vulnerability in its Omni deposit and withdrawal layer that allowed attackers to steal approximately $3.8 million.
• On-chain investigator ZachXBT indicated that this funds flowed to KuCoin and was converted into Bitcoin across chains; Near Intents has promised full compensation and has already contacted the law enforcement authorities.
• Following this attack, the NEAR token fell by 6.7% to $4.96; just two days prior to that, Near Intents had refused to provide services to a Bitget hacker associated with North Korea.

Near Intents is a tool that allows for the exchange of encrypted assets between different blockchains. The service was suspended on Thursday after an attacker transferred approximately $3.8 million from it. The team stated that there was a vulnerability in the interaction between its Omni deposit and withdrawal layer and the main smart contract, which is the automatically executed code that holds users' funds, providing an opportunity for the attacker to exploit.

The team posted on X stating: "Earlier today, after detecting a security incident, the NEAR Intents service was halted. This incident was caused by a vulnerability in the interaction between the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure and the NEAR Intents smart contract."

The team also stated, "This incident has been reported to the law enforcement authorities. We are working together with security partners and blockchain analysis partners to trace the flow of funds and proceed with the recovery efforts."

This attack occurred two days after a high-profile incident on Near Intents. At that time, the service intercepted an exchange attempt by a hacker from Bitget for $50 million. Just last week, this same hacker stole approximately $387.5 million from that cryptocurrency exchange. It is not yet clear whether there is any connection between these two incidents.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic both pointed their fingers at North Korea last week, claiming that it is likely to be behind the exchange hacking incident, citing several typical signs, but this has also not been confirmed yet.

Just before this incident occurred, Near also saw positive news for its institutional products: Bitwise's Near ETF was launched just two days ago. This fund allows ordinary investors to bet on this token through regular brokerage accounts without the need for a cryptocurrency wallet. NEAR is the native token of that network, and on Thursday, it fell by 8.93% to $4.86, while the shares of ETF also declined by more than 7%.

Bitwise submitted the application documents for the fund as early as April 2025, at which time the trading price of NEAR was 2.61 US dollars. Since then, the price of this token has nearly doubled.

Near Intents indicates that the contract-side vulnerabilities have been fixed, and core services are expected to resume within about one hour. However, 11 online deposit and withdrawal functions, including BNB Chain, Polygon, and Optimism, will still be suspended for approximately 12 hours to complete the repairs related to Omni. The project team stated that the lost funds "will be fully compensated."

Near Intents can be understood as a 24/7 currency exchange counter. After a user makes a request, competing market makers—i.e., trading companies that provide quotes—will compete to fulfill the order. This service has processed over $30 billion in exchange transactions on 35 blockchains.

And this intermediate layer is precisely the weak link in the industry. To transfer value between different blockchains, it is necessary to pool funds in the middle, and such fund pools often attract thieves. A clear example is the notorious Harmony cross-chain bridge attack in 2022, during which approximately 100 million dollars went missing.

As for which specific individuals had their funds stolen, this has not yet been disclosed. The balance of cryptocurrency assets does not come with deposit insurance like bank deposits, and this is also why it is so important that Near Intents commits to making compensations.

Near Intents indicates that a detailed report will be released in the coming days.