NEAR Intents lost roughly $3.8 million on October 1 in an exploit targeting the cross-chain trading protocol's deposit and withdrawal infrastructure, according to a project statement and on-chain analysis by blockchain investigator ZachXBT.

The protocol paused core services and disabled deposits and withdrawals across at least eleven blockchain networks. ZachXBT traced the outflows to irregular withdrawals from a BNB Chain hot wallet linked to NEAR Intents, with the stolen funds subsequently routed through crypto exchange KuCoin and bridged into bitcoin.

A NEAR Intents statement attributed the incident to a bug in how its Omni deposit and withdrawal system interacted with the platform's smart contract. The protocol said the contract-side vulnerability has since been patched and committed to reimbursing affected users in full.

What does NEAR Intents actually do?

NEAR Intents operates as an intent-based cross-chain trading system. Users specify a desired swap rather than choosing a bridge, exchange or route themselves; independent market makers, called "solvers," compete to execute the trade behind the scenes. The protocol's website claims more than $30 billion in cumulative volume across 35 blockchains.

The native NEAR token traded at $4.94, down roughly 6% over the prior 24 hours. The disclosed vulnerability sat in the cross-chain infrastructure rather than the base NEAR Protocol consensus layer, a distinction that matters for any subsequent depeg or contagion analysis.

How did the exploit unfold?

ZachXBT, a pseudonymous on-chain investigator widely cited in industry reporting, traced the attack's origin to a BNB Chain hot wallet. From there, the funds moved through KuCoin and into bitcoin via cross-chain bridges — a laundering pattern that has recurred across most major exploits of 2026.

NEAR Intents confirmed it has reported the incident to law enforcement and engaged security and blockchain analytics firms to pursue recovery. The platform expected core services to resume quickly, though deposits and withdrawals on the affected networks were set to remain offline longer while remediation work continued.

Which networks remain offline?

The protocol's status page listed disruptions across the following networks:

• BNB Smart Chain
• Polygon
• TON
• Optimism
• Avalanche
• Stellar
• Monad
• X Layer
• ADI
• Scroll
• Plasma

The breadth of impact reflects a structural risk that cross-chain protocols face: failure at a single integration point can halt flows across many otherwise unrelated chains.

Where does this sit in 2026's hack tally?

The incident extends what trackers describe as an unusually heavy year for crypto security. Per DefiLlama data, the four largest 2026 exploits preceding NEAR Intents were Bitget (over $350 million), Liquid Network (about $320 million), Drift ($295 million), and Kelp ($293 million).

NEAR Intents' $3.8 million loss is materially smaller. Yet it underscores a recurring failure mode: vulnerabilities at the boundaries between chains, and at the routing layer that intent-based protocols depend on.

What happens next?

The protocol has not published a firm timeline for restoring deposits and withdrawals on the eleven listed networks. The law enforcement referral, combined with analytics-firm engagement, opens a recovery pathway — though attribution and clawback on bridged or mixed funds have historically yielded low recovery rates.

Expect NEAR Intents to publish a post-mortem and remediation roadmap before re-enabling deposits, given its stated commitment to full reimbursement and continued onboarding of new chains.