In response to recent large-scale security incidents, the crypto industry is rapidly shifting from mere reactive post-incident cleanup toward real-time collaborative defense and proactive auditing. On September 28, the NEAR Intents SHIELD system successfully detected and blocked a cross-chain transfer of approximately $50 million in funds stolen from the Bitget hack, while also freezing $503,000 in a mid-swap stage. Meanwhile, Liquid Network, which experienced a major exploit in early September, has officially begun an external security audit of the Elements v23.3.4 version and has initiated updates to its Peg-out Authorization Key (PAK) list.

These cases are interesting because they mark a departure from the traditional passive approach of waiting for exchanges to process freeze requests after a hack has already occurred. Technology like NEAR SHIELD, which detects anomalous transactions in real time at the on-chain protocol level to intercept cross-chain money laundering, is proving its practical utility. Liquid Network is also taking proactive steps to rebuild trust by patching bugs in its core verification code and preparing to safely resume peg-outs following an external audit.

Of course, these real-time defense mechanisms and the blocking of specific transactions could reignite the debate over censorship resistance—a core value of the crypto ecosystem. Determining the extent to which automated security blocks at the protocol level should be permitted and how to achieve community consensus remains a significant challenge. However, in an era of multi-chain connectivity with large-scale liquidity, these real-time collaborative defense networks seem increasingly likely to become a prerequisite for institutional capital inflow. It will be interesting to see if other mainnets and DeFi protocols adopt similar defense systems!

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