Bitget Freezes Attacker’s Funds, Sparking Debate: What Happened on a “Censorship-Resistant” Platform?
NEAR Intents said it froze approximately $503,000 linked to the Bitget attacker, prompting debate over the platform’s promise to provide a “permissionless and censorship-resistant” service.
According to CoinDesk, NEAR Intents General Manager Alex Shevchenko said the attackers who stole $388 million from Bitget tried to move more than $50 million in funds through the cross-chain swap service. The platform’s SHIELD system rejected most of these attempts.
Approximately $503,000 was held during transactions, while around $166,000 passed through the service. The frozen amount will be held until legal proceedings and efforts to recover the funds are complete.
$50 million in attempted transfers, $503,000 frozen
The figure of more than $50 million in the report refers to attempted transfers, not money recovered. Shevchenko said repeated attempts were removed from the tally and that the rejected funds were later routed through other services. The figures are estimates and carry an approximate 10% margin of error.
SHIELD monitors unusual behavior in fund flows, using data from transaction monitoring and intelligence providers, as well as independent researchers, companies, and centralized exchanges. Based on these signals, swap requests can be delayed or blocked.
A security measure or an intervention that raises questions about neutrality?
The ability to hold funds drew criticism because NEAR Intents describes itself as a permissionless and censorship-resistant service. Vini Barbosa, a technical writer at Ramp Labs, argued that permissionless access requires neutrality, saying restrictions on users believed to be acting illegally could also affect people resisting government pressure.
NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin said that not needing permission to hold assets on the blockchain, make transfers, or publish a smart contract does not mean every application and liquidity provider must accept every transaction. The controls are applied to NEAR Intents’ swap service; they do not give it authority over all NEAR wallets.
A different approach from THORChain
NEAR Intents’ decision differs from THORChain’s approach, which rejected Bitget’s request to block the attacker’s addresses. THORChain had argued that emergency shutdown powers were designed to protect the protocol, not to selectively freeze specific addresses.
Shevchenko asked Bitget to contact the platform through legal and law enforcement channels and said they would waive the fund recovery bounty. The report did not specify who would approve the release of the held funds or how a user mistakenly flagged could appeal.