According to PANews, the official account of the public chain project, NEAR Protocol, is suspected of being hacked. The account's avatar on the platform has been changed to a plain black image, and its personal bio has been altered to the cryptic word 'Dark' with scrambled characters. In the early hours of May 9th, the account posted four strange tweets with scrambled characters, which read 're claim your sovereignty', 'darkness', 'take back your', and 'The sun rises in the east'. As of now, no explanation has been provided by NEAR on any of their other official social media channels.