Overview
- A recovery package announced Thursday commits up to $147.5–$150 million, with Tether providing as much as $127.5 million, to relaunch Drift on USDT and fund a user pool.
- The plan uses a revenue-linked credit line, ecosystem grants, and market-maker loans, directing trading fees and committed capital into a pool meant to repay roughly $295 million over time.
- Drift will issue a transferable recovery token and will restart only after third-party code audits and a new community multisig with hardware-based signing checks.
- The April 1 breach, tied by investigators to North Korea-linked operators who spent months inside the project, saw about $232 million in USDC moved through Circle’s bridge as the firm declined to freeze funds absent law-enforcement orders, and Circle now faces a class action.
- Shifting Drift’s settlement layer from USDC to USDT could steer users and liquidity toward Tether on Solana, yet the package covers only part of losses, leaving many customers waiting on staged repayments.