Tether leads roughly $148M rescue package to reboot Drift, swaps USDC for USDT after $270M hack
Drift Protocol — the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Solana — has secured a proposed rescue package of up to $147.5 million (commonly reported as ~$148 million) led by Tether as it prepares to relaunch using USDT as its settlement currency, the companies said Thursday.
What’s in the deal
- Tether would provide up to $127.5 million, with about $20 million coming from other partners.
- The package combines a revenue-linked credit facility, ecosystem grants and loans to market makers.
- A share of future trading revenue, together with committed capital, will flow into a recovery pool designed to restore an estimated ~$295 million in user losses over time.
- Tether also plans fee cuts, user incentives tied to the transition to USDT, and liquidity support to help ensure trading depth at relaunch.
Why the shift to USDT
Drift previously used Circle’s USDC as its settlement layer. The move to Tether’s USDT is intended to create a more flexible operational environment for recovery and ongoing risk-management — notably because Tether has a track record of freezing assets linked to hacks or illicit activity, while Circle has said it only freezes USDC wallets when ordered by courts or law enforcement.
Background: the exploit
On April 1, a group linked to North Korea carried out an exploit that drained more than $270 million from Drift. According to reports, the attackers had infiltrated the project by posing as a quantitative trading firm for roughly six months before executing the theft. They moved about $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle’s cross-chain transfer protocol. Drift’s governance token, DRIFT, plunged roughly 70% in value following the incident.
Market context and implications
Drift — founded in 2021 — hosts over 175,000 users and has amassed roughly $150 billion in cumulative trading volume across perpetuals, spot, lending, borrowing and cross-margin products. The rescue and migration to USDT underscores growing competition and strategic divergence in the stablecoin market: USDC has been gaining institutional credibility and transaction share on the back of regulatory alignment, while USDT still dominates by supply (CoinDesk data: roughly $185.5 billion for USDT vs $78.6 billion for USDC) and demonstrates operational nimbleness around freezing compromised funds.
The package aims to both stabilize Drift’s marketplace and provide a multi-year pathway to compensate affected users while restoring operations as an USDT-based perpetual futures exchange on Solana.
Read more: How a Solana feature designed for convenience let attackers drain more than $270 million from Drift
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