NEAR Intents: Over $50 million in Bitget hacker-related transfers intercepted, $503,000 actually frozen.

BlockBeats news, September 29: Alex Shevchenko, General Manager of the cross-chain protocol NEAR Intents, stated that its SHIELD system has identified and intercepted over $50 million in transfer attempts related to the Bitget attacker, with the funds subsequently redirected to other service providers. The system actually froze approximately $503,000 during transaction execution, but about $166,000 in suspected stolen funds still completed transfers through NEAR Intents.

Shevchenko stated that a significant portion of the $387.5 million in assets stolen by the Bitget attacker was transferred to Ethereum via cross-chain methods. NEAR Intents will forgo the 5% bounty offered by Bitget for freezing the attacker's funds, as well as an additional 5% bounty for recovering the funds, allowing more funds to be returned to Bitget. The frozen assets will be returned through appropriate legal procedures.

Shevchenko believes that a permissionless system does not mean it must remain neutral, and protocol developers still need to decide what actions the system permits. He stated: "Refusing to help launder stolen assets is one of the choices we have made." He also said that property rights are the foundation of a functioning market, and the crypto industry cannot demand recognition of digital property rights while building infrastructure that facilitates the monetization of stolen assets.

This statement comes as THORChain faces scrutiny for processing funds from the Bitget attacker. THORChain stated that its protocol is designed not to censor; the previous network suspension was an emergency security mechanism affecting the entire protocol, not a selective freeze targeting specific funds or a single transaction. Additionally, Circle and Tether have previously blacklisted a wallet associated with the Bitget attacker, freezing approximately $318,000 in USDT and USDC.