NEAR Intents Blocks Over $50 Million Linked to $387.5 Million Bitget Hack

NEAR Intents has blocked over $50 million (roughly Rs. 480 crore) in cross-chain transactions that it has associated with the wallets connected to the Bitget hack, worth $387.5 million (roughly Rs. 3,718 crore). General Manager of NEAR Intents, Alex Shevchenko, said on September 29 that the protocol's SHIELD mechanism flagged the transaction flows as suspicious and stopped them from being completed via its network. NEAR Intents provides an opportunity for users to swap assets between blockchains using a network of solvers. 

THORChain Rejects Selective Transaction Censorship

In the course of the operation, SHIELD has frozen nearly $503,000 (roughly Rs. 4.8 crore), while nearly $166,000 (roughly Rs. 1.5 crore) had gone through before being blocked by the time of the operation, as posted by Shevchenko. This follows five days after Bitget experienced one of the biggest thefts from a crypto exchange in 2026. Bitget has stated that $387.5 million (roughly Rs. 3,718 crore) worth of crypto was transferred to the addresses controlled by the attackers on September 24, which was an increase in the first estimation of $351.6 million (roughly Rs. 3,373 crore). 

According to Shevchenko, SHIELD is the system used by NEAR Intents to determine any possible suspicious activity prior to swap completion. This statement created a clear distinction between the mechanism used by the protocol and the services that do not screen each wallet for transactions. “Refusing to help launder stolen assets is one of ours,” Shevchenko said, adding that the developers of permissionless systems do decide what is possible within their infrastructure.
 
Gracy Chen, the CEO of Bitget, advised THORChain to refuse service provision to the identified addresses since investigators have traced the stolen assets across various blockchains. Some of the stolen cryptocurrency has been transferred to Bitcoin via cross-chain swaps, while other funds still lie in wallets associated with the attack.

According to THORChain, the protocol is designed not to engage in selective censorship of transactions. The network can be shut down during emergencies; however, according to THORChain, the control is about protocol security and is network-wide one.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin withdrawals have been restored by Bitget after an attack diverted almost $387.5 million (roughly Rs. 3,718 crore) to hacker-owned addresses and led the exchange to halt withdrawals on September 24. According to Bitget, the start of BTC withdrawals marked the start of the gradual resumption of operations following security reviews of its withdrawal system. The firm stated that the vulnerability that led to the problem has been patched and that there have been no other unauthorised transactions since then.