NEAR Intents hit by $3.8 million exploit as crypto's rough year of hacks continues
- NEAR Intents suffered a security exploit Thursday that caused about $3.8 million in losses and prompted the cross-chain trading platform to pause services and restrict deposits and withdrawals on several blockchains.
- The project attributed the exploit to a bug involving its Omni system and smart contract, said the vulnerability had been patched and pledged to reimburse affected funds in full.
- NEAR Intents reported the incident to law enforcement and enlisted security firms to trace funds that an investigator said were sent to KuCoin and converted into bitcoin.
Blockchain protocol NEAR Intents was hit by a security exploit that caused about $3.8 million in losses Thursday, forcing the platform to pause services and temporarily disable deposits and withdrawals on several blockchains.
The project said the incident was caused by a bug in the way its Omni deposit and withdrawal system interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract. The contract-side vulnerability has since been patched, and NEAR Intents said affected funds will be reimbursed in full.
NEAR Intents is designed to make cross-chain trading simpler. Instead of asking users to choose a bridge, exchange or route themselves, they specify the swap they want and independent market makers, known as solvers, compete to complete it behind the scenes. The platform’s website said it has processed more than $30 billion in volume across 35 blockchains.
NEAR NEAR$4.8451, the native token of the blockchain closely associated with NEAR Intents, was down about 6% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing, though the disclosed vulnerability involved its cross-chain infrastructure rather than the underlying NEAR Protocol blockchain.