The protocol, which is primarily used to trade perpetual futures, has paused deposits and withdrawals amid the attack.
“Drift Protocol is experiencing an active attack,” it posted on X around 3:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday. “Deposits and withdrawals have been suspended. We are coordinating with multiple security firms, bridges, and exchanges to contain the incident. This is not an April Fools joke,” the company posted.
Reports of suspicious activity began around two hours earlier, when users noticed large sums being transferred from the Drift Protocol vault to a Solana address beginning with “HkGz4K.”
The account’s first transfer took place around 11:06 a.m., when roughly 41 million JLP tokens valued at $155 million were transferred from the Drift Vault to “HkGz4K.” Shortly thereafter, millions more in various crypto tokens were transferred to the attacker and ultimately distributed to other wallets.
Jiang Xuxian, founder of blockchain security firm PeckShield, told Decrypt that attack relied on gaining privileged access to Drift's protocol.
"The admin keys behind Drift were definitely leaked or compromised," he said.
Drift's native token, DRIFT, is down nearly 28% on the day, recently changing hands around $0.049. The token has fallen more than 98% from its November 2024 all-time high of $2.60.
