In brief
- Near Intents recovered the full $3.8 million stolen in Thursday’s exploit, general manager Alex Shevchenko said Friday, ending its investigation.
- The return followed Shevchenko publicly identifying the attacker and giving them 48 hours to return the funds.
- An on-chain message appearing to come from the exploiter admitted wrongdoing and urged others to use bug bounties.
Near Intents has recovered the stolen funds in full.
The cross-chain swap service confirmed Friday that approximately $3.8 million drained in a Thursday exploit was returned entirely. The recovery came one day after the team publicly stated it had identified the attacker.
“The funds from the $3.8M NEAR Intents hack were sent back in full,” Alex Shevchenko, general manager of Near Intents, wrote on X. “We are stopping the investigation.”
The turnaround was swift. On Thursday, Shevchenko posted Bitcoin, BNB/Ethereum and Solana addresses for returning the funds and addressed the attacker directly: “We have identified you, sir.”
He framed the return as a final opportunity for responsible disclosure, the practice of reporting a vulnerability to developers instead of exploiting it, and warned that the window would close after 48 hours.
An on-chain message attached to a transaction, which Shevchenko shared and which appears to come from the exploiter, struck a contrite tone. “We’ve returned all the funds, we were in the wrong,” it read. The message also thanked the Near team for being cordial during the process and urged others to use bug bounties.
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Near Intents halted service Thursday after a bug in how its Omni deposit and withdrawal layer interacted with its main smart contract allowed an attacker to siphon funds. The team had pledged to compensate users in full and reported the incident to law enforcement. Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said the stolen funds were sent to KuCoin and bridged to Bitcoin.
Near Intents allows users to swap tokens across 35 blockchains by stating their desired swap and letting market makers compete to fill the order. The service has processed more than $30 billion in swaps, according to its data.
The exploit capped a turbulent week. Two days earlier, Near Intents blocked a $50 million swap attempt by the hacker behind the roughly $387.5 million Bitget breach, which Bitget and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic attributed to North Korea. The hack also came days after Bitwise’s spot NEAR ETF began trading.
“Please use bug bounties instead of disrupting the services,” Shevchenko wrote.
