Near Intents Recovers $3.8M After Attacker Returns Funds Following 48-Hour Ultimatum

Near Intents said Friday it recovered the roughly $3.8 million drained in a Thursday exploit after the attacker returned all funds, ending a 48-hour ultimatum issued by the cross-chain swap service. "The funds from the $3.8M NEAR Intents hack were sent back in full," general manager Alex Shevchenko wrote on X. "We are stopping the investigation." An on-chain message from the exploiter read: "We've returned all the funds, we were in the wrong." The hack stemmed from a bug in how Near Intents' Omni deposit and withdrawal layer interacted with its main smart contract, prompting a service halt on Thursday. Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said the funds were routed to KuCoin and bridged to Bitcoin. The incident capped a turbulent week: two days earlier, Near Intents blocked a $50 million swap attempt by the hacker behind the $387.5 million Bitget breach. Near Intents has processed more than $30 billion in swaps.