BLOCKCHAIN LAB BRIEFING · SECURITY

NEAR Intents Says a Bug Cost About $3.8 Million. The Protocol Account Says the Chain Did Not Stop

The operator's post separates a bridge-side bug from the chain. The replies mostly score the response time. A preliminary number is not the post-mortem.

1 October 2026

All briefings

What happened

On 1 October 2026 @near_intents posted that services had been stopped after a bug in the way Omni's deposit and withdrawal infrastructure interacted with the NEAR Intents contract. The preliminary loss is about $3.8 million. The post says users will be compensated in full, the contract-side bug has been patched, and Intents and near.com were expected back within an hour. Deposits and withdrawals on a list of other networks, including BSC, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, LayerX, Adi, Scroll and Plasma, were to stay unavailable for about twelve further hours. The snapshot shows 235 reposts, 282 quotes, 206 replies and 1,598 likes.

@NEARProtocol posted separately that the NEAR blockchain was producing blocks, that the incident was not a vulnerability in the protocol or the native token, and pointed readers at the Intents note. @mert, quoting the same note, wrote that this was a bridge to NEAR rather than NEAR itself, that $3 million was a small bridge loss, and that the users had been made whole and the bug patched in an hour. His figure is rougher than the operator's $3.8 million.

Why it matters

The distinction the operator and the protocol account both draw is the one that matters: a contract plus a piece of deposit infrastructure failed; the chain did not halt. People still lost the ability to move assets on a long list of networks for the rest of the day.

A promise to compensate in full is a balance-sheet promise. It is not a completed payment. 'Preliminary' is doing real work in the sentence.

The operating layer

If you integrate a cross-chain deposit path, the failure in this note is the interaction between two systems, not a single contract line you can guess at. The post-mortem is the document. It was not in the post.

Do not resume deposits on the named networks because the Intents app itself was expected back in an hour. The post says those networks stay shut for longer.

What is verified

The operator's post states the bug's location in general terms, a preliminary loss, a compensation promise, a patch, and a split restart.

The protocol account says the chain did not stop. This desk has not traced the funds or read the detailed report, which the operator said would come later.

What is still unclear

The actual broken function, which a reply explicitly asks for and does not get.

Whether compensation has been paid.

Whether law-enforcement involvement changes what can be published.

The catch

A fast patch and a small number are why the replies relax. Relaxing is not verification. A preliminary $3.8 million can move, and a chain that kept producing blocks can still sit in front of a bridge that cannot pay out.

WATCH

What builders should watch

01The detailed report the operator promised.
02Whether the $3.8 million figure is revised.
03Which networks were actually reopened, and when.
04That 'the chain is up' does not mean deposits are.

BOTTOM LINE

NEAR Intents says a bug between Omni and its contract cost about $3.8 million, that users will be made whole, and that the chain itself did not stop. The figure is preliminary, the report is still due, and a fast note is not the accounting.

Sources

Blockchain Lab uses public social posts as reporting leads, not as proof. Every published briefing is assessed against primary sources, available documentation and relevant technical context. Social engagement is not used as evidence of the underlying claim.