The popular cross-chain trading system said it will reimburse losses after a bug affected deposits and withdrawals across several networks.

• NEAR Intents suffered a security exploit Thursday that caused about $3.8 million in losses and prompted the cross-chain trading platform to pause services and restrict deposits and withdrawals on several blockchains.
• The project attributed the exploit to a bug involving its Omni system and smart contract, said the vulnerability had been patched and pledged to reimburse affected funds in full.
• NEAR Intents reported the incident to law enforcement and enlisted security firms to trace funds that an investigator said were sent to KuCoin and converted into bitcoin.

Blockchain protocol NEAR Intents was hit by a security exploit that caused about $3.8 million in losses Thursday, forcing the platform to pause services and temporarily disable deposits and withdrawals on several blockchains.

The project said the incident was caused by a bug in the way its Omni deposit and withdrawal system interacted with the NEAR Intents smart contract. The contract-side vulnerability has since been patched, and NEAR Intents said affected funds will be reimbursed in full.

NEAR Intents is designed to make cross-chain trading simpler. Instead of asking users to choose a bridge, exchange or route themselves, they specify the swap they want and independent market makers, known as solvers, compete to complete it behind the scenes. The platform’s website said it has processed more than $30 billion in volume across 35 blockchains.

The incident adds to a rough year for crypto security. Just last week, exchange Bitget suffered an exploit that resulted in over $350 million in stolen assets. Other major incidents included Liquid Network at about $320 million, Drift at $295 million and Kelp at $293 million, according to DefiLlama data.

NEAR Intents said it reported the incident to law enforcement and is working with security and blockchain analytics firms to trace the funds.

Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said the exploit began with irregular withdrawals from a BNB Chain hot wallet linked to NEAR Intents. He said the stolen funds were then sent to crypto exchange KuCoin and bridged into bitcoin

The platform expected core services to resume quickly, but deposits and withdrawals on several networks were set to remain unavailable for longer while fixes were completed. Its status page showed issues affecting BNB Smart Chain, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, X Layer, ADI, Scroll and Plasma.

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