NEAR price fell about 8% after NEAR Intents disclosed a $3.8 million exploit linked to an Omni infrastructure bug, overshadowing the launch of Bitwise’s first U.S. spot NEAR ETF.
NEAR price fell about 8% on October 1, 2026, after NEAR Intents reported a security incident that resulted in an estimated $3.8 million loss. The move came a day after Bitwise launched the first spot NEAR exchange-traded fund in the United States.
This put fresh attention on the token just as the exploit became the dominant market story. As per Coingecko, NEAR traded at about $4.8, down 8.1% at the time. The incident was traced to a bug in the interaction between NEAR Intents’ Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure and its smart contract.
NEAR Intents said services were stopped after the issue was detected. It also said the contract-side vulnerability had been patched.
The protocol promised to make users whole, stating, "These funds will be compensated in full.” The team said NEAR Intents and near.com were expected to resume operations within about an hour of the announcement.
The initial NEAR price reaction was swift. CoinGecko market data showed the token under pressure as the exploit circulated. The damage itself was relatively minor compared to some of the other blockchain heists that have happened recently in the crypto space.
Intents are meant to enable transfers between deposits, withdrawals, and other operations on different blockchains, so the potential for a security breach there is certainly concerning.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT said a NEAR Intents BSC hot wallet showed irregular outflows. He reported that the stolen funds were transferred to KuCoin and later bridged to Bitcoin.
That detail adds a second layer to the incident. The problem was first described by NEAR Intents as an infrastructure bug. The movement of the assets then became a separate tracking exercise, with the team working with blockchain analytics firms and law enforcement.
NEAR price therefore became a live measure of the market’s response to an operational failure rather than a change in the underlying token’s stated role.
On September 30, Bitwise began trading the first U.S. spot NEAR ETF on the NYSE Arca under the ticker NRR. The product gave traditional-market investors direct exposure to NEAR and included a staking component.
The launch followed a strong September move. NEAR had reached $5.57 on September 27, representing a 206% increase from its lowest level in September. By September 30, NEAR had rebounded to about $5.06 after trading as low as $4.50 earlier in the week.
The exploit changed that market narrative quickly. NEAR price was suddenly being driven by a security headline instead of the ETF launch that had dominated the previous session.
NEAR Protocol’s total value locked had climbed from roughly $170 million in August to $371 million, while September network fees had topped $6.75 million. Those figures provided a broader backdrop for the token’s recent strength before the exploit.
NEAR Intents said core services could return within roughly one hour, but deposits and withdrawals across 11 networks would remain unavailable for about another 12 hours.
The affected networks include BSC, Polygon, TON, Optimism, Avalanche, Stellar, Monad, LayerX, Adi, Scroll, and Plasma.
Users holding assets from those networks inside NEAR Intents, including through Hot Wallet or near.com, were told they would be able to swap those assets into other tokens once the service resumed.
The team also said the incident had been reported to law enforcement and that it was working with security and blockchain analytics partners to trace the funds and pursue recovery. A detailed report is expected in the following days.
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