NEAR Intents’ SHIELD risk layer blocked over $50M in stolen Bitget funds, earning praise from CEO Gracy Chen

When $387.5 million vanishes from a crypto exchange, the clock starts ticking immediately. NEAR Intents, a cross-chain intent-based swap protocol, just demonstrated what happens when the compliance team reacts faster than the thieves.

Following the September 24 breach of Bitget, NEAR Intents’ built-in risk-intelligence layer, called SHIELD, detected and blocked more than $50 million in attempted laundering tied to the hack. Of the flagged transactions, only about $166,000 managed to slip through the system. Another $503,000 was frozen mid-execution.

How SHIELD caught what others missed

NEAR Intents operates as a cross-chain swap protocol on the NEAR blockchain, processing over $100 million in daily volume under normal conditions. SHIELD works by pulling signals from multiple intelligence and compliance providers to identify transactions linked to known exploits, sanctioned wallets, or suspicious behavioral patterns. When the Bitget funds started flowing, SHIELD flagged them almost immediately.

The distinction NEAR Intents draws between “permissionless” and “neutral” is worth understanding. A permissionless protocol lets anyone transact without gatekeepers. A neutral protocol treats all transactions as morally equivalent. NEAR Intents argues it can be the former without being the latter, processing legitimate swaps freely while filtering out provably stolen assets.

After the initial detection, NEAR Intents redirected the majority of suspicious flows to alternative providers. In practical terms, this meant the stolen assets couldn’t re-enter clean circulation through NEAR Intents’ infrastructure.

Bitget’s $387.5M problem

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen publicly praised NEAR Intents for its role in disrupting the laundering process.

NEAR Intents waived its right to a 5% bounty for freezing and recovering the identified stolen assets. In crypto’s bug bounty and white-hat culture, that 5% on $50 million-plus in flagged transactions would have been a significant payday.

What this means for cross-chain compliance

The $166,000 that slipped through represents roughly 0.3% of the flagged amount. The $503,000 frozen mid-execution is particularly notable from a technical standpoint. Freezing assets during a cross-chain swap requires the protocol to intervene at a point where most systems are designed to be atomic, meaning either the whole transaction completes or none of it does. That SHIELD can pause execution mid-stream without breaking the protocol’s core functionality suggests some sophisticated engineering under the hood.

For Bitget and its affected users, $50 million in blocked laundering doesn’t make them whole on a $387.5 million loss. But it does slow the hackers’ ability to cash out, which extends the window for broader recovery efforts across the ecosystem.