Gate News message, April 16 — Drift Protocol announced today a structured recovery plan supported by approximately $150 million in combined backing, with Tether contributing $127.5 million. The announcement comes several weeks after the platform suffered a $280 million exploit, one of the most significant DeFi hacks on record.
As part of the recovery framework, Drift will transition from Circle’s USDC to Tether’s USDT as its core stablecoin. This shift will affect 128,000 users and over 35 ecosystem teams operating on the platform, which is regarded as one of Solana’s largest perpetual trading venues. The recovery plan links funding and user balance restoration to ongoing platform trading activity, with exchange revenue also supporting recovery efforts as operations normalize.
The transition has drawn attention following criticism of Circle’s handling of the exploit. Crypto analyst ZachXBT highlighted that attackers bridged millions in stolen USDC from Solana to Ethereum via Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) over hundreds of transactions, with a six-hour intervention window during U.S. business hours. Circle’s Chief Strategy Officer, Dante Disparte, responded that the issuer does not freeze assets at its own discretion and can only do so under legal compulsion. Disparte called for new regulatory frameworks (GENIUS and CLARITY) to clarify the issuer’s role in on-chain security.
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