Near Intents Hacked for $3.8M, Freezes Cross-Chain Swaps

The halt of cross-chain swaps matters less for the headline loss than for what it reveals about the operational risk in intent-based bridging, where a single bug can stop the flow rather than just drain a pool. The project's earlier denial of a state-linked attacker, followed by this disclosure, makes attribution and disclosure timing the real story. Whether repayment actually reaches every affected user, and on what timeline, is the open question; until that is specified, the incident remains a trust test for Near Intents specifically and for intent-based infrastructure more broadly.