NEAR Intents blocks most Bitget hacker swap attempts, testing protocol governance claims

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NEAR Intents blocks Bitget hack

Highlights

Attackers who stole $388 million from Bitget attempted to move over $50 million via NEAR Intents, which blocked most transfers and froze $503,000.
NEAR Intents' SHIELD system allowed $166,000 to pass through while the majority of restricted funds await legal and recovery processes, with estimates possibly differing by 10%.
Despite describing itself as permissionless and uncensorable, NEAR Intents intervened, unlike THORChain, marking escalating importance of security controls and governance for cross-chain crypto platforms.

Blocked transfers and recovery process

As reported by CoinDesk, citing Alex Shevchenko, general manager of NEAR Intents, attackers who siphoned off $388 million from Bitget last week tried to move more than $50 million through the protocol's cross-chain swap service.

Shevchenko says NEAR Intents' SHIELD system blocks most of those transfers and freezes $503,000 midway through transaction processing. He says about $166,000 passes through, while the restricted funds are awaiting a legal and recovery process.

He adds that the larger total reflects attempted transfers, not money recovered. Duplicate attempts are removed from the tally, and he says rejected funds subsequently move to other providers; the estimates could still differ from actual amounts by roughly 10%.

Implications for permissionless crypto services

NEAR Intents describes itself as permissionless, open and uncensorable, but its response to the Bitget incident shows that some decentralized trading infrastructure is still applying intervention tools when stolen funds are detected. That sets it apart from THORChain, which resists Bitget's request to block attacker addresses.

Shevchenko says NEAR Intents routinely processes more than $100 million in daily cross-chain trading volume and that only a negligible fraction of the hacked funds is flowing through the service. The episode highlights how security controls, compliance pressure and governance design are becoming more important competitive issues for cross-chain crypto platforms.

In our earlier coverage of Anthropic’s IPO filing, we outlined how the company is designing a governance structure that preserves founder control through a Founder LLC and a special Class F share with majority voting power. We also noted that this setup is meant to protect Anthropic’s long-term AI safety mission, even if it limits ordinary shareholder influence and creates trade-offs for investors.

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