Tether is leading a $150M recovery initiative for Drift Protocol; the plan will also shift the perp DEX’s primary settlement asset to USDT on Solana.
Tether announced a strategic collaboration with Drift Protocol on Thursday, April 16, to support user recovery and facilitate the platform’s relaunch following the exploit earlier this month.
The recovery plan is backed by up to $150 million in combined support, including up to $127.5 million from Tether, according to the announcement from the firm. The structure links funding to trading activity on Drift’s platform, enabling user balance restoration as the exchange resumes operations and generates revenue.
As the Defiant reported previously, the perpetual futures DEX was hacked for over $270 million in crypto on April 1. An April 5 postmortem from Drift revealed that the attack was the result of a complex social engineering and corporate infiltration scheme that began at least six months before the exploit occurred. Per Drift’s report, independent, nonprofit on-chain security group SEAL 911 found that the exploit was likely carried out by a North Korean state-affiliated group.
USDT Settlement
As part of the relaunch, Drift will transition its settlement asset from USDC to USDT, bringing its over 128,000 users and 35 ecosystem teams, including Gauntlet, Neutral, and M1, onto USDT-based trading on Solana, per the announcement. The move positions USDT as a primary settlement asset on what was Solana’s largest perp DEX.
The bulk of USDT’s over $185.4 billion circulating supply is currently on Ethereum and TRON, with both chains holding about 45% of the stablecoin’s market cap. About $3 billion in USDT is currently on Solana, making it the fourth-largest chain by USDT market cap, following BNB Smart Chain (BSC).
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in today’s announcement that the investment and collaboration reflect confidence in Drift’s role in DeFi, and emphasized aligning recovery with real activity and long-term growth.
The DRIFT token rallied over 14% today on the news to ab0out $0.05, after falling sharply after the exploit. The token remains down 98% from its all-time high of $2.60 set in November 2024, per CoinGecko data.
Earlier this week, Tether launched its own wallet app, a multichain, self-custodial wallet that supports USDT, USAT, XAUT, and Bitcoin.
This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.
