NEAR Intents, the multichain transaction protocol built on NEAR Protocol, has drawn both praise and criticism after intercepting over $50 million in assets tied to the $387.5 million Bitget exchange hack.
Bitget CEO Shows Gratitude for NEAR’s Swift Action on Illicit Funds
Bitget CEO Gracy Chen commended NEAR Intents on Monday for flagging the compromised funds, noting that the protocol halted approximately $503,000 mid-transfer and forfeited its bounty share to maximize recovery for the exchange. Chen argued that permissionless infrastructure need not facilitate stolen assets, emphasizing that robust risk-detection mechanisms can coexist with open access.
Chen reassured users that her team will continue enforcing necessary legal action and recovery efforts to hold malicious actors accountable and return the funds to their rightful owners.
NEAR Co-Founder Sets Boundaries on What Permissionless Entails
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin clarified the protocol’s position: NEAR remains permissionless programmable money, meaning anyone can transact or deploy contracts without authorization. However, individual applications and liquidity providers are not obligated to process every transaction. The SHIELD system provides shared, real-time risk intelligence to block illicit flows without compromising the network’s openness.
“Open financial infrastructure does not require us to make theft easy,” Polosukhin stated. “Instead of hiding behind ‘it’s permissionless, what can we do’ while sitting on the pause button, we should be creative in solutions that address the underlying problem.”
Mixed Responses on the Matter
While many view NEAR’s intervention as a responsible industry standard, critics argue that permissionless neutrality should preclude discrimination based on transaction origin—pointing to THORChain’s contrasting stance of refusing to block addresses tied to the Bitget hack.
