NEAR Intents general manager gives attacker 48 hours to return funds

NEAR Intents has given the attacker behind its recent exploit a clock to beat. According to The Defiant, the protocol’s general manager set a 48-hour window for the stolen funds to come back.

The team also posted three addresses where the money can be returned.

What happened at NEAR Intents

The exploit hit on October 1, 2026. NEAR Intents lost approximately $3.8 million, mostly in USDT, the dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Tether.

The money came out of a treasury contract on BNB Chain.

The root cause was a bug in how the protocol’s Omni deposit-and-withdrawal infrastructure talked to its smart contracts.

Once the team spotted the exploit, it halted services. The contract-side flaw was patched within about an hour of detection.

Core services came back online swiftly after the fix. Some cross-chain features stayed offline for longer while repairs continued.

Following the money

Investigators traced the stolen assets to KuCoin, the centralized crypto exchange. From there, the funds were converted to Bitcoin.

NEAR Intents said it is working with law enforcement and blockchain analytics firms to trace the funds. The 48-hour deadline arrives on top of that effort, not in place of it.

Earlier public communications from the team had not included a return deadline. The new ultimatum marks a shift from damage control toward direct pressure on the person holding the bag.

The protocol has also pledged to fully compensate affected users.

A pattern in cross-chain DeFi

This is not NEAR Intents’ first brush with exploit-linked activity. Before this incident, the protocol blocked a significant amount of suspicious transactions tied to a previous hack.

What this means for NEAR and its holders

The NEAR token dropped between 6% and 10% following the exploit announcement.

That reaction came even though the exploit was confined to NEAR Intents’ own infrastructure. The underlying NEAR Protocol and its other applications were not directly affected.

The incident lands against a backdrop of growing adoption and the launch of products such as the US spot NEAR ETF.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.