Tether announced it will lead a $150 million recovery program to help relaunch the Drift Protocol decentralized exchange and restore user funds after a $280 million exploit in April. Tether said it will provide $127.5 million of the package, with the remainder coming from undisclosed partners.
The recovery plan links funding and reimbursement to the restart of trading on Drift, enabling user balances to be returned incrementally as activity resumes rather than relying solely on an upfront cash payout. Drift has also agreed to make direct contributions to the recovery as its trading operations ramp back up.
As part of the relaunch, Drift intends to change its settlement asset from Circle’s USDC to Tether’s USDT.
Onchain investigators reported that the attacker moved more than $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). The funds were transferred in over 100 transactions and reportedly laundered during a roughly six-hour window. Security firms cited in coverage have linked the exploit to actors associated with North Korea.
Circle faced criticism from industry participants and blockchain security researchers for not freezing the USDC wallets tied to the exploiter while the transfers were occurring. After the incident, Circle’s stock dropped about 10% on April 9 amid investor concern and downgraded forecasts; market data cited in reports showed the share price later recovered and was roughly 20% higher by a recent close.
The Drift exploit and Tether’s recovery effort illustrate a broader trend in which crypto firms and industry partners cooperate to recover user funds and stabilize platforms in the wake of major hacks and security incidents.