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TracingTrace an Intent-Based Bridge (NEAR Intents) via Its Public Explorer

Trace an Intent-Based Bridge (NEAR Intents) via Its Public Explorer

tactic

Core idea

Intent-based bridges (NEAR Intents and similar solver / settlement layers) publish a PUBLIC explorer that maps every settlement back to its source. Given only the destination payout transaction, the explorer hands you the source chain, source asset and amount, the source-chain deposit tx, the destination withdraw tx, and the user’s intent account. This collapses a probabilistic timing/amount guess into a deterministic in-to-out lookup. It matters because an intent swap changes BOTH asset and amount (e.g. 1 ZEC in, 0.257 ETH out), so timing/amount correlation cannot match it, but the explorer resolves it exactly.

When to use

When a trace reaches an intent-bridge payout (for example an Arkham label like “NEAR Intents: Bridge Hot Wallet” paying your subject address) and you need the source side. Try this deterministic lookup before any probabilistic correlation or an RFI.

Components

  • Grab the destination settlement / withdraw tx (the payout into your subject).
  • Look it up on the NEAR Intents Explorer (explorer.near-intents.org, keyed by transaction) or the Range cross-chain explorer (range.org). The Explorer API mirrors it but needs a JWT, so it is not usable headless.
  • Read off: From (source chain + asset + amount); the “deposited to” address is the BRIDGE’s own deposit address, NOT the source wallet, so do not chase it; the source-chain Deposit tx (its inputs are the closest thing to a source); the Withdraw tx (destination payout); the Intent hash; and under “View All Swap Steps” the user’s intent account (a 64-hex NEAR implicit account).
  • GOTCHA 1, solver is not the suspect: the solver / market-maker (e.g. crux.near) sits on the counterparty side of EVERY leg, receiving what the user spent and sending what the user got. Do not attribute it. The user’s account is the one that both spent the input asset and received the output asset.
  • GOTCHA 2, source chain is not identity: the explorer gets you to the source-chain deposit tx, but that tx may itself be a privacy wall (e.g. a Zcash Orchard deshield), so the real sender can still be hidden.
  • The user’s intent account is a durable identifier: enumerate its other intents, and use it as an RFI target to the bridge operator (KYC / IP / full intent history).

Example

CASE-2026-002 (Hinkal): 0.257 ETH arrived at the gas-funding hub from “NEAR Intents: Bridge Hot Wallet”. The NEAR Intents explorer resolved that settlement to 1 ZEC swapped to ETH, Zcash deposit tx 5ebdeab05fe38ec10fd7e9af31ebb59d033bbcdc2a8c1833f5bf23d8ac5868a9, intent hash 1SQyZo…RzAMVm, user intent account b943c608c4e60f0bbe51eb1cc9331e15940415e93d190eada4bbcacb01423b16; solver crux.near dismissed as a market-maker. The Zcash deposit turned out to be an Orchard shielded-pool deshield (a wall), so the explorer got us to the source chain but not to identity.

Cross-Chain / Bridge & Swap Analysis, Service Choke-Points: What Each Service Type Can Give You, Decoding a Cross-Chain Destination Address from Input Data, Time-and-Value Analysis, Identify a zk Shielded-Pool Withdrawal On-Chain, Privacy-Coin Conversion, Monero is the Practical Ceiling of On-Chain Attribution

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Time-and-Value AnalysisTransaction Graph Analysis (TGA)