NEAR Intents service exploited for $3.8 million two days after Bitwise ETF launch

NEAR Intents, the cross-chain swap service built on NEAR Protocol, lost roughly $3.8 million to an exploit on Thursday (October 1, 2026), just two days after Bitwise launched the first US spot NEAR exchange-traded fund partly pitched on the service’s track record. The breach matters for institutional holders because it hit the infrastructure Bitwise cited to justify the ETF, not the NEAR blockchain itself, raising questions about counterparty risk inside a newly regulated product.