NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swap protocol that routes trades across multiple networks, halted all services on Thursday after an exploit drained roughly $3.8 million from user funds.

The team disclosed the incident in an X post, attributing the loss to a bug in how its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract. "We will fully compensate the lost funds," the team wrote, adding that the contract vulnerability had already been patched. NEAR Intents and the Near.com consumer interface were expected to resume core operations within an hour of disclosure.

The disruption, however, extends well beyond the application's front end. Deposits and withdrawals on 11 supported blockchain networks — including BNB Smart Chain, Polygon and Optimism — will remain unavailable for roughly another 12 hours while the team verifies the patch across each chain's deployment.

Where did the stolen funds move?

On-chain investigator ZachXBT, posting to his Telegram investigations channel, flagged irregular outflows from the protocol's BSC hot wallet. He traced the proceeds from there to a deposit at the KuCoin exchange before they were bridged onto bitcoin. The Block contacted KuCoin for comment but received no immediate reply.

NEAR Intents said it had engaged law enforcement and blockchain analytics partners to support the trace and will publish a full post-mortem report in the coming days. The decision to route the funds through a centralized exchange before bridging them onto bitcoin leaves a recoverable paper trail — but only if the venue freezes the receiving account and cooperates with subpoenas.

What is the broader fallout?

The incident lands during a particularly sensitive window for the NEAR ecosystem. Roughly six weeks ago, NEAR Intents reported crossing $25 billion in cumulative lifetime volume routed through the platform, a scale that highlights how much swap liquidity was intermediating through the now-paused infrastructure. Withdrawals across the 11 affected chains effectively halt one of the largest cross-chain entry points into NEAR-traded assets.

The exploit also complicates the launch narrative for Bitwise's NEAR ETF (ticker NRR), which began trading on US venues just two days earlier. NEAR's native token traded down 6.7% on the day to $4.96, while NRR slid 6.4%, erasing gains accumulated on its Wednesday debut. Spot ETF shareholders absorb NEAR's price action directly, meaning any extended outage at the dominant swap venue would compound the pressure on the fund's net asset value.

What happens next?

Two near-term milestones will define the operational and reputational fallout. NEAR Intents' promised post-mortem will determine whether the Omni bug can be reproduced in test environments and whether additional chains beyond the 11 disclosed remain exposed. Separately, the KuCoin cooperation channel — and the eventual response from law enforcement — will determine how much of the bridged bitcoin can be frozen before it is split, mixed or moved off-rails.

NEAR Intents has not yet committed to a firm publication date for the post-mortem, saying only that the report will arrive in the coming days. Until the 11 affected chains reopen, market makers and aggregators that route through NEAR Intents will need to lean on alternative bridges, deepening demand for liquidity on competing cross-chain swap infrastructure.