Tether, the stablecoin big behind $185 billion USDT, has introduced its help of a restoration plan to help Drift Protocol following a devastating hack on April 1.
Drift, a Solana-based perpetual futures change, misplaced round $285 million after its staff was allegedly infiltrated by North Korean-linked hackers to compromise a multisignature pockets.
The transfer will even see Drift “transition its settlement asset from USDC to USDT” and seems to be a “masterclass” bid for dominance on Solana the place competitor Circle’s USDC is extra widespread.
Whereas USDT is far-and-away the crypto business’s dominant stablecoin, on Solana, closest competitor USDC flips the script.
Within the wider market, USDT’s market cap is over 2.3 occasions that of USDC’s $79 billion. However on Solana, USDC’s market cap of $8.1 billion is 2.65 bigger than USDT’s $3.05 billion.
In changing USDC, Tether claims it can convey “more than 128,000 users and over 35 ecosystem teams onto USDT-based trading… on one of Solana’s largest perpetual trading venues.”
Certainly, Drift Protocol’s pre-hack whole worth locked was $550 million, which might make it Solana’s eighth largest protocol by the identical metric, forward of real-world asset platforms Securitize and xStocks and decentralized change Meteora.
An extended street to restoration?
The restoration plan is much from a straight-up reimbursement for customers. It’ll as an alternative see change income directed towards restoration, with “capital support… introduced progressively and aligned with performance.”
DeFiLlama’s 0xngmi remarked that it seems to be “closer to a plan where users recover their hacked amounts by trading on drift.”
Each a portion of change charges and out of doors help funds will probably be dedicated to a “recovery pool” for distribution to affected customers. Drift additionally describes a deliberate token “intended to represent a claim on the recovery pool.”
With a nod to issues raised within the wake of the hack, it explains that each one core property will probably be managed by a brand new “community-based multisig,” utilizing “dedicated signing devices, with transaction content independently verified.”
Going spherical in Circles
Circle has been repeatedly criticized over its failure to freeze funds within the aftermath of hacks and different illicit exercise.
The Drift hack was probably the most egregious examples of this, as highlighted by blockchain investigator, and frequent Circle critic, ZachXBT.
Replace: $230M+ USDC bridged by way of CCTP from Solana to Ethereum throughout 100+ txns.
6 hours is how lengthy Circle needed to freeze stolen funds from the $280M+ Drift hack.
Circle is a centralized stablecoin issuer headquartered in New York and the assault started round 12 pm ET.
Why does… pic.twitter.com/v9OKxeOJHN
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) April 2, 2026
Different examples embrace the SwapNet hack, the place over $3 million of USDC sat unfrozen on Base hours after the occasion, and final yr’s GMX hack during which $8 million was bridged utilizing Circle’s personal device.
This newest incident seems to have lastly landed USDC’s issuer in scorching water.
A category motion swimsuit has reportedly been filed towards Circle, accusing the agency of “knowingly permitting the attackers, reportedly tied to North Korea’s government, to offload $230 million of their spoils over the course of several hours by using Circle’s own stablecoin USDC and its blockchain bridge CCTP, instead of freezing the funds.”
Protos reached out to Tether for remark, but it surely didn’t reply instantly, we’ll replace this piece if we hear again.
