Drift to issue ‘recovery tokens’ in wake of $295m hack

Developers behind Solana-based derivatives exchange Drift proposed on Tuesday a recovery plan that would funnel protocol revenue to users who lost money in a devastating April hack.

The developers also proposed relaunching the protocol before July “a leaner, perps-native exchange with an emphasis on security.”

“The Drift team is taking considered measures to ensure that users are made whole, and that Drift restores itself as the leading perpetuals DEX on Solana,” they said in an update posted on the exchange’s website.

“The team has made internal hard decisions to restructure and operate as lean as possible, focusing entirely on recovery and relaunch.”

But various elements of the recovery plan will have to be approved by Drift tokenholders — and, if all goes according to plan, victims could wait years to break even.

On April 1, hackers were able to trick Drift administrators into approving bogus transactions. The hackers made off with crypto worth $295 million, forcing Drift to suspend trading and other activity. Blockchain analysts have since said North Korea was likely behind the hack.

Should it pass, Drift’s proposal would lead to a lengthy recovery process for users who want to be fully compensated for their losses.

Users would be issued a “recovery token” representing a claim on a "recovery pool” that would be gradually filled by Drift revenue, as well as crypto committed by Tether and other organizations that offered help after the hack. The claim would be proportional to the amount that each user lost, according to an update on the Drift website.

Drift earned $19 million in revenue in 2025. At that rate, it could take nearly eight years for the recovery pool to reach $295 million, assuming Tether and other partners honour their promise to commit a combined $147 million to Drift recovery efforts.

Users who don’t want to wait would be able to redeem their recovery tokens under par as soon as the recovery pool tops $5 million in assets. Drift proposed seeding the pool with just under $4 million in stablecoins.

The recovery tokens would be transferrable, letting people bet on the success of Drift’s business model, which is changing dramatically in the wake of the hack.

According to the proposal, the new Drift would drop “earn” products that resemble high-risk, high-yield savings accounts, and focus on a perpetual futures exchange running on slimmed-down code — a change that would limit hackers’ opportunities to find exploitable bugs.

The protocol would accept fewer collateral assets and offer only the most popular and liquid assets for trading.

Drift would also delay work on a mobile application and a new liquidity model it had unveiled just three months earlier.

Its rebrand as a “security-first” exchange, administrators would be required to follow a formal security protocol that includes dedicated devices and quarterly security training sessions.

The proposal had little affect on the Drift token, which was trading just under $0.04 before and after Tuesday’s announcement.

“This will take time but the structure is in place, ecosystem partners are committed and the work is underway,” the proposal concluded.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. You can reach him at aleks@dlnews.com.