Drift Protocol has announced a collaboration with Tether (USDT) and other partners totaling nearly $150 million to fund user recovery and a protocol relaunch following its April 1 exploit on Solana (SOL).

The package includes a $100 million revenue-linked credit facility, an ecosystem grant, and loans to designated market makers. USDT will serve as the settlement asset when the protocol relaunches.

Recovery Pool and Token for Impacted Users

The funds, out of which $127.5 million is reportedly from Tether, will support a dedicated user recovery pool fed by exchange revenue and committed support capital.

Drift stated that any assets recovered through ongoing law enforcement and blockchain forensics efforts will also flow into the pool.

To distribute recovery assets, Drift will issue a new transferable token to users affected by the April 1 exploit. The team said additional details on token mechanics will follow in the near term.

The April 1 attack drained between $270 million and $285 million from Drift’s vaults.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic attributed the operation to North Korean state-linked actors who spent six months infiltrating the protocol’s inner circle.

Attackers posed as a quantitative trading firm, built trust at conferences, and compromised devices through a malicious TestFlight app and a VSCode vulnerability.

They then manipulated Drift’s multisig approvals using Solana’s durable nonces feature to drain core vaults holding USDC, SOL, and JLP tokens.

The incident slashed Drift’s total value locked from $550 million to roughly $230 million. The Drift (DRIFT) token dropped over 30% in the immediate aftermath. The protocol’s TVL was $243 million as of this writing.

Hardened Security and USDT-Centered Relaunch

Before relaunching, every protocol component will pass independent audits from OtterSec and Asymmetric Research.

Drift will also introduce a community-governed multisig for core protocol assets, requiring all signers to use dedicated devices with transaction content verified outside the primary signing interface.

Tether has proposed extending a USDT support facility to market makers to ensure deep liquidity from day one.

The shift to USDT settlement marks a notable pivot after Circle declined to freeze stolen USDC during the original attack.

Circle’s position on the matter is that it didn’t freeze stolen USDC because it can only act with legal orders, not on its own.

“When Circle freezes USDC, it is not because we have decided, unilaterally or arbitrarily, that someone’s assets should be taken from them. It is because the law requires us to act,” wrote Circle’s CSO Dante Disparte in a blog.

Tether’s involvement signals a growing willingness among stablecoin issuers to act as ecosystem backstops during major crises.

“The willingness of Paolo Ardoino Tether and our partners to commit real capital to Drift’s recovery says something about the strength of what we’ve built and what we’re building next, as well as our shared vision to scale the Solana DeFi ecosystem together,” said Cindy Leow, co-founder at Drift Protocol.

However, the partial recovery also highlights persistent vulnerabilities in operational security, even among mature protocols.

Drift described the plan as its first step toward making users whole over time.

The post Drift Protocol Lands $150 Million Lifeline in Aftermath of Exploit Shock appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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