NEAR Intents Intercepts Massive Suspicious Fund Flow
According to Alex Shevchenko, lead of the cross-chain protocol NEAR Intents, its SHIELD risk mitigation system has identified and blocked over $50 million in cross-chain transfer attempts linked to the recent Bitget exploit. The flagged funds were subsequently routed to other service providers.
Amounts Frozen and Fund Trails
At the point of transaction execution, the system successfully froze approximately $503,000 in assets. However, around $166,000 in suspected stolen funds managed to complete transfers through the protocol. Shevchenko noted that a significant portion of the assets stolen in the attack were bridged to the Ethereum network.
Regarding the frozen assets, NEAR Intents has chosen to waive the bounty rewards offered for both freezing and recovering the funds, aiming to maximize the amount returned to the affected party. The restitution of these assets will follow appropriate legal channels.
A Protocol's Stance: Refusing to Be a Laundering Conduit
Shevchenko articulated the team's position clearly. He argued that a "permissionless" system does not mandate absolute neutrality in all matters. Protocol developers bear the responsibility of deciding what behaviors their system should permit.
"Choosing not to assist in laundering stolen assets is one of the active decisions we've made." He emphasized that property rights are fundamental to market function. The crypto industry, he stated, cannot logically advocate for the recognition of digital property rights while simultaneously building infrastructure that facilitates the liquidation of stolen assets.
Industry Context and Rippling Effects
This stance from NEAR Intents comes as another major cross-chain protocol, THORChain, faces community scrutiny for its handling of funds connected to the same incident. THORChain responded that its protocol is designed to be non-custodial and non-censoring; a previous network halt was a global emergency security measure, not a selective freeze of specific funds.
In related actions, stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have blacklisted a wallet address associated with the attacker, freezing about $318,000 worth of USDC and USDT. These events collectively highlight the differing response strategies and governance philosophies within the industry following a major security breach.