Drift Protocol Appears to Receive $127.5 Million USDT Funding Injection After Exploit

Drift Protocol is reported to have received up to $127.5 million USDT from Tether to partially compensate affected users following the April 1 exploit on Solana
SOLUSD
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This commitment will cover approximately 47% of the estimated stolen assets amounting to US$$270 million to US$$285 million. This support becomes one of the largest interventions by a stablecoin issuer after a DeFi security incident.

Tether Steps In After Largest DeFi Hack of 2026

The April 1 attack on Drift, the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchange on Solana, was not an ordinary smart contract exploit.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic linked this operation to actors connected to North Korea, who spent six months infiltrating the protocol’s inner circle.

The attacker disguised as a quantitative trading firm, built trust at conferences, then infiltrated devices via malicious TestFlight apps and vulnerabilities in VSCode.

They then manipulated Drift’s multisig approval using Solana’s durable nonce feature to drain the core vault containing USDC, SOL, and JLP tokens.

This incident reduced Drift’s total value locked from US$$550 million to around US$$230 million. Drift’s token (DRIFT) also dropped more than 30% shortly afterward.

Recovery Raises Moral Hazard Questions

Tether’s involvement indicates the increasing role of stablecoin issuers as a buffer for the ecosystem amid a major crisis.

However, this partial recovery also highlights ongoing operational security gaps, even in well-developed protocols.

Critics question whether external bailouts might create moral hazard by reducing incentives for protocols to invest in security.

Some also point out that Circle refused to freeze the stolen USDC during the attack, raising questions from on-chain investigators.

Circle argued that they did not freeze the stolen USDC because they can only act under legal orders, not on their own initiative.

“When Circle freezes USDC, it is not because we have decided, unilaterally or arbitrarily, that someone’s assets should be taken from them. It is because the law requires us to act,” wrote Circle’s CSO Dante Disparte in a blog.

The Drift team is still working with security firms SEAL 911 and OtterSec, as well as the Solana Foundation’s STRIDE initiative.

Full details regarding user claim schedules and compensation distribution mechanisms have not yet been disclosed.