NEAR Intents blocks $50M in attempted Bitget hack money laundering

General manager Alex Shevchenko confirmed that the protocol’s SHIELD system successfully prevented the laundering of stolen funds through its infrastructure. While the system managed to freeze approximately $503,000 during the execution phase, roughly $166,000 in illicit capital successfully moved through before the protocol intervened. The remaining $50 million rejected by the system subsequently shifted toward other service providers.

Shevchenko emphasized that developers of permissionless systems retain the agency to decide what their infrastructure permits, arguing that the unrestricted movement of stolen assets does not equate to a freer financial system. Unlike some other platforms, NEAR Intents plans to waive its eligibility for Bitget’s recovery bounty, opting instead to return the frozen funds through formal legal channels.

This proactive stance contrasts with the position taken by THORChain, which has faced significant pressure to blacklist attacker-controlled wallets. THORChain maintains that its architecture is designed to avoid selective censorship of individual transactions, asserting that its emergency halt mechanisms are reserved for systemic protocol security rather than the targeted freezing of specific swaps. Meanwhile, centralized stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether have already blacklisted addresses linked to the incident, successfully freezing approximately $318,000 in USDC and USDT.