NEAR Intents was hit by a security exploit that caused approximately $3.8 million in losses and led the cross-chain trading platform to pause services and restrict deposits and withdrawals across several networks. The attacker returned all stolen assets a day later, according to Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, after the project identified the exploiter and established communication.
Bug forced a temporary halt
The incident involved a flaw in the interaction between NEAR Intents’ Omni deposit and withdrawal system and its smart contract. The project said the contract-side vulnerability had been patched and that affected users would be reimbursed in full.
The return of the assets meant reimbursement was ultimately not required, although the platform initially committed to making users whole. NEAR Intents also reported the incident to law enforcement and said it was working with security and blockchain analytics firms to trace the movement of funds.
Deposits and withdrawals were temporarily disabled on multiple networks while the team addressed the problem. The affected networks listed on the platform’s status page included BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, X Layer, ADI, Scroll and Plasma. Core services were expected to resume quickly, while some network-specific deposit and withdrawal functions were expected to remain unavailable for longer as fixes were completed.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said the exploit began with irregular withdrawals from a BNB Chain hot wallet linked to NEAR Intents. He said the assets were then sent to crypto exchange KuCoin and moved through a bridge into bitcoin.
How NEAR Intents works
NEAR Intents is designed to simplify trading between different blockchains. Rather than requiring users to select a bridge, exchange or transaction route themselves, the system allows them to specify the swap they want. Independent market makers, called solvers, then compete behind the scenes to complete the transaction.
This model is intended to reduce the technical complexity of cross-chain trading, but it also depends on infrastructure that can coordinate deposits, withdrawals and settlement across multiple networks. The exploit highlighted the security risks associated with that infrastructure, even though the disclosed flaw concerned the cross-chain system rather than the underlying NEAR Protocol blockchain.
The platform’s website said NEAR Intents had processed more than $30 billion in volume across 35 blockchains. Its connection with a broad range of networks means an incident affecting deposits and withdrawals can have operational consequences beyond a single blockchain, even when the underlying protocol itself is not reported to have been compromised.
Wider crypto security pressure
The incident adds to a difficult year for crypto security. According to CoinDesk, recent major attacks included an exploit at Bitget that resulted in more than $350 million in stolen assets. Other incidents cited in the report involved Liquid Network, at approximately $320 million, Drift, at $295 million, and Kelp, at $293 million, based on DefiLlama data.
The size of the NEAR Intents loss was considerably smaller than those incidents, but the event still forced a service interruption and highlighted the exposure created by systems that connect multiple blockchain networks. The eventual return of the assets also limited the financial impact for affected users, although the platform still had to patch the vulnerability, investigate the attack and restore access across the impacted networks.
The native NEAR token is associated with the blockchain ecosystem behind NEAR Intents, but the reported vulnerability was in NEAR Intents’ cross-chain infrastructure, not in the NEAR Protocol blockchain itself.
Market picture
Moneyiar market data recorded at 09:04 on October 3, 2026, showed NEAR Protocol at $4.6738086058, down 5.08% over 24 hours and 3.16% over seven days. The source material had earlier reported the token down about 6% over 24 hours at the time of writing.
Other assets in the supplied Moneyiar data were also lower over the latest 24-hour period: Cronos was $0.066343993, down 3.89%; Plasma was $0.0923697619, down 4.2%; and Walrus was $0.0340056844, down 1.32%. Over seven days, Cronos was up 0.77%, while Plasma fell 21.28% and Walrus declined 7.87%.
The market figures describe price movements at the stated time and do not establish that the NEAR token’s performance was caused by the exploit.
