Circle · Unchained
Drift Secures $147.5 Million From Tether, Drops Circle’s USDC After Massive Exploit
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 outlet. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
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Tether commits $127.5 million to fund Drift’s recovery and relaunch on Solana, while a class action targets Circle for failing to freeze stolen USDC during the April 1 exploit.
Key facts
- The deal includes up to $127.5 million from Tether and $20 million from additional partners, structured as a revenue-linked credit facility designed to gradually repay approximately $295 million
- Drift had more than 175,000 users and roughly $150 billion in cumulative trading volume before the incident
- Hackers then moved approximately $232 million in stolen USDC to Ethereum using Circle’s cross-chain transfer protocol over the course of several hours across more than 100 transactions
- Drift Protocol announced Thursday a recovery and relaunch plan backed by a $147.5 million funding package from Tether and partners, replacing Circle’s USDC with Tether’s USDT as its core settlement
Summary
Drift Protocol announced Thursday a recovery and relaunch plan backed by a $147.5 million funding package from Tether and partners, replacing Circle’s USDC with Tether’s USDT as its core settlement layer on Solana. The deal includes up to $127.5 million from Tether and $20 million from additional partners, structured as a revenue-linked credit facility designed to gradually repay approximately $295 million in user losses from the April 1 exploit. Drift said it will issue a dedicated recovery token, separate from the DRIFT governance token, to represent user claims on the recovery pool. The protocol will undergo full independent audits of each component before relaunching.