Near Intents paused service on Thursday after a bug in its Omni deposit and withdrawal layer allowed an attacker to drain roughly $3.8 million from the cross-chain swapping platform, which has pledged full compensation and reported the incident to law enforcement.

The team said the flaw lay in how the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract—the self-running code that holds user funds. That division is a familiar weak point in crypto security: even a sound on-chain contract can be undermined by flaws in the off-chain infrastructure that shuttles funds in and out.

"Earlier today NEAR Intents services were stopped after a security incident was detected. The incident was caused by a bug in the Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interaction with NEAR Intents smart contract," the team wrote in a post on X.

"The incident has been reported to law enforcement, and we are working with security and blockchain analytics partners to trace the funds and pursue recovery," it added.

On-chain sleuth ZachXBT reported that the stolen funds were sent to crypto exchange KuCoin and bridged into bitcoin. Near Intents said the lost funds "will be compensated in full."

The platform has not disclosed whose funds were taken. Unlike bank deposits, crypto balances carry no deposit insurance, which is why the repayment pledge matters for users.

The exploit came just two days after Near Intents blocked a $50 million swap attempt from the Bitget hacker, who stole around $387.5 million from the crypto exchange last week. It is not currently clear whether the two incidents are related.

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic both pointed to North Korea as the likely culprit behind last week's exchange hack, citing tell-tale signs, though that attribution has likewise not been confirmed.

The security lapse punctuated an institutional high point for the network. Bitwise's Near ETF—a fund that lets ordinary investors gain exposure to a through a regular brokerage account, no crypto wallet required—had launched just two days earlier. NEAR, the network's native token, fell 8.93% to $4.86 following the exploit, and shares of the ETF dropped more than 7%.

Bitwise first filed paperwork for the fund in April 2025, when NEAR traded at $2.61. The token has almost doubled since.

Near Intents said the contract-side hole has been patched and core services should resume within about an hour. Deposits and withdrawals on 11 networks, including BNB Chain, Polygon and Optimism, will remain down for roughly 12 more hours while fixes to the Omni layer are completed.

The company said it will publish a detailed report in the coming days. Whether the remaining deposit and withdrawal channels come back on schedule—and whether the tracing effort recovers any funds—will be the near-term markers to watch.

Near Intents operates like a currency-exchange counter that never closes: users specify what they want to trade, and rival market makers—trading firms that quote prices—compete to fill the order. The platform has handled more than $30 billion in swaps across 35 blockchains.

The middle layer connecting blockchains is the industry's weak spot. Moving value between chains means pooling money in the middle, and pools attract thieves. A clear example is the infamous Harmony bridge hack in 2022, when about $100 million disappeared. An even starker one came months earlier that year: the Ronin bridge hack, in which attackers made off with more than $600 million—still among the largest losses in crypto history.