Drift Secures Up to $148M From Tether, Moves Settlement to USDT After $270M Hack
Drift Protocol said it has a proposed rescue package totaling up to $147.5M after an April 1, North Korea-linked exploit that drained over $270M in client assets. Tether would supply up to $127.5M, with partners adding up to $20M. Drift plans to repay about $295M in losses over time via a recovery pool funded by revenue and committed capital.
For the relaunch, Drift will shift settlement from Circle’s USDC to **USDT** on Solana and relaunch as a USDT-settled perpetuals DEX. The funding is structured as a revenue-linked credit facility plus ecosystem grants and loans to market makers, aiming to support user recovery while Drift reopens operations. Drift also reported that the attacker moved roughly $232M in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle’s cross-chain transfer protocol. Critics questioned Circle’s speed on freezing/blacklisting; Circle’s CEO later said freezing requires law-enforcement or court directives, not real-time action during hacks.
Following the incident, Drift’s governance token **DRIFT** reportedly fell around 70%. The move keeps **USDT** at the center of Drift’s trading infrastructure and intensifies the USDT-vs-USDC settlement “war,” which can materially affect liquidity and volumes on major Solana venues.
Bullish
The plan explicitly shifts Drift’s Solana perpetuals settlement from USDC to **USDT**, and pairs that with a large, recovery-driven relaunch effort. In the short term, traders may front-run the expected liquidity/volume re-routing toward USDT, supporting USDT demand. In the long term, keeping USDT as the settlement layer at a major venue can strengthen USDT’s usage and market share in Solana derivatives flows. While the broader story is an exploit and recovery (which adds risk sentiment), the specific operational decision to concentrate on **USDT** is more likely to be net supportive for **USDT** pricing than negative.