NEAR Intents Hacker Returns $3.8M in Full

NEAR Intents general manager Alex Shevchenko announced on Oct. 2 that the full $3.8 million stolen from the cross-chain protocol had been returned. He said the team is stopping its investigation into the incident.

Shevchenko

on X that the funds were sent back in full, and he asked security researchers to use bug bounty programs instead of disrupting live services going forward.

NEAR Intents

it paused operations on Oct. 1 after spotting a bug in how its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacted with its

. The team's initial estimate put the loss at roughly $3.8 million.

NEAR Intents lets users state the trade outcome they want, while independent market makers called solvers carry out the transaction. This removes the need for users to pick a specific bridge or exchange themselves. The protocol has processed more than $30 billion in volume across 35 blockchains, according to the company.

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin said the damage was limited to USDT on the BNB Smart Chain. He said the NEAR token, the core

protocol, and other applications on the network were not affected. NEAR Protocol (

) fell about 6% in the hours following the news, trading near $4.95 before settling around $4.81.