Drift Protocol Secures $147.5M Funding from Tether to Relaunch as USDT-Based Exchange

Gate News message, April 17 — Drift Protocol, a Solana-based decentralized derivatives exchange hit by a $270 million exploit on April 1 linked to North Korea, announced plans to relaunch as a USDT-based perpetual futures exchange. The project secured a proposed funding package of up to $147.5 million from Tether and its partners to support the restart.

The funding package comprises $127.5 million from Tether, the issuer of USDT, and $20 million from other backers. The support combines revenue-linked credit facilities, grants, and loans to market makers, aimed at enabling user recovery and resuming trading operations.

Drift will allocate a portion of trading revenue to a recovery pool designed to cover approximately $295 million in total user losses from the exploit. The protocol’s transition to USDT as its settlement layer follows backlash over Circle’s handling of the hack, during which attackers transferred roughly $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum.