Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Drift Protocol has shared the highly anticipated user recovery plan alongside Tether and other collaborators. This move follows the major exploit that drained $285 million from the project’s vaults two weeks ago.
Drift Protocol Secures $150M Recovery FundOn Thursday, Drift Protocol, the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on the Solana blockchain, announced a collaboration with Tether and other partners to establish a “structured recovery plan backed by up to nearly $150 million in combined support” and relaunch with USDT “at the center.”
During the initial phase of the collaboration, a significant portion of exchange revenue, together with committed support capital, will be intended to fund this recovery pool, Drift explained, noting that any stolen funds recovered would be contributed to the pool.
In addition, Drift revealed that it will issue a new token for the affected users to “streamline distribution of recovery assets as well as provide liquidity opportunities for impacted users.”
The token will be a dedicated recovery token, separate from the DRIFT governance token, that is intended to represent a claim on the recovery pool and will be transferable.
Solana DEX Eyes Hardened Security FrameworkThe Solana-based project shared that it will harden its security, passing each component through independent audits by OtterSec and Asymmetric Research before relaunching the protocol.
It will also introduce a new community-governed multisig to manage core protocol assets, requiring all multisig signers to operate on dedicated signing devices with transaction content independently verified outside the primary signing interface before any signature is executed.
“The attack involved unauthorized or misrepresented transaction approvals obtained prior to execution, likely facilitated through durable nonce mechanisms and sophisticated social engineering,” the project explained on its first report.
USDT Settlements ‘At The Center’ Of DriftThe project also detailed that it will relaunch with Tether’s USDT for settlements. Tether reportedly proposed to extend a USDT support facility to designated market makers “to reinforce deep, liquid markets from day one.”
Notably, the exploiter swapped $270.9 million of the stolen assets into USDC within hours, bridged them from Solana to Ethereum via the CCTP TokenMessengerMinterV2, and purchased 129,000 ETH, splitting them across multiple wallets.
Drift concluded that “this is the first step toward making users whole over time and toward building back stronger than where we were before.”
