POPA ReconDFINITY founder Dominic Williams accuses NEAR Intents of building on DFINITY proprietary Chain Key threshold ECDSA tech.
He says in an X article the algorithm NEAR took is from DFINITY's April 27, 2022 paper on ECDSA with additive key derivation and presignatures, developed for Internet Computer Ethereum integration announced May 2021, and licensed only for Internet Computer. He claims NEAR hired a person DFINITY fired in summer 2021 plus two DFINITY engineers, studied ICP libraries on GitHub, and after 2.5 years is now attempting an emergency downgrade to a slower 3-round signing version versus DFINITY's 1-round version, and flags legal implications.
He adds a prior-day claim that NEAR Confidential Intents runs as a separate permissioned chain called FAR with no real cryptography behind privacy claims, and that Intents runs on about 8 servers versus ICP subnets of about 50 nodes, so not decentralized with backdoor and upgrade risks.
NEAR replied via NEAR Protocol that Chain Signatures launched Q1 2024, now run entirely inside TEEs with onchain verifiable attestation, with 17 independent mainnet operators sustainably funded by emissions. Williams acknowledged the dashboard now showing 16 not 8 nodes run by parties including Sovereign AI, Bitwise, Nansen, Greenfield, Everstake, Near One and Luganodes, but says this does not resolve trusted dealer key distribution, upgrade key extraction risk, or the proprietary tech claim, and separately claims NEAR's 2025 CKD confidential key derivation copies ICP vetKeys from 2023.
Coverage so far is claims by Williams and aggregators like crypto_banter and BlockchainPill. No court filing, NEAR admission, or independent audit cited in sources; Telegram relay mmsnews carries only the Chinese headline of possible legal action.