Tether backs Drift recovery and raises pressure on Circle

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Olga Shendetskaya

16.04.2026

Tether backs Drift recovery and raises pressure on Circle — Drift gets $148M from Tether post-hack

Drift Protocol, one of the largest decentralized perpetual futures exchanges on Solana, has secured up to $150 million in funding from Tether and its partners to repay users affected by a major exploit and relaunch the platform using USDT as its primary settlement stablecoin.

Highlights

Drift secured up to $150 million from Tether and partners to repay users and relaunch the protocol.
The platform will replace USDC with USDT as its primary settlement stablecoin.
The April hack resulted in over $270 million stolen, with total user losses estimated at $295 million.

According to CoinDesk, the funding package includes up to $127.5 million from Tether and $20 million from other partners. It is structured as a revenue-sharing facility, with a portion of future trading revenue directed toward a reserve fund to gradually cover approximately $295 million in user losses caused by the April 1 hack.

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Aftermath of the exploit

The attack, attributed to a North Korea-linked group, resulted in the theft of more than $270 million. The hackers had posed as a quantitative trading firm for several months before executing the exploit. Following the incident, Drift’s governance token DRIFT lost around 70% of its value.

As part of the recovery plan, Drift will fully transition from Circle’s USDC to Tether’s USDT as its base settlement asset. The platform intends to offer incentives and liquidity support to facilitate the switch.

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Criticism of Circle’s response

The hack also drew criticism toward Circle, with some in the crypto community arguing that the company was too slow to freeze the stolen USDC funds. The attacker reportedly transferred around $232 million in USDC from Solana to Ethereum using Circle’s cross-chain protocol. Circle has maintained that it only freezes wallets upon receiving formal requests from law enforcement or court orders, citing legal risks.

In contrast, Tether has a history of more proactively freezing assets linked to hacks and illicit activity.

Drift, which had over 175,000 users and a cumulative trading volume of approximately $150 billion before the exploit, offers perpetual futures, spot trading, lending, borrowing, and cross-margin capabilities.

Implications for DeFi and stablecoin competition

The Drift-Tether deal highlights the intensifying competition between major stablecoin issuers and the growing importance of rapid response capabilities during crises in decentralized finance.

By choosing Tether over Circle after suffering a major exploit, Drift has sent a clear signal about which stablecoin it believes offers better protection and support for protocols under stress.

The move could influence how other DeFi platforms approach stablecoin partnerships in the future.

Earlier, we reported that Tether launches crypto wallet for stablecoins, gold and Bitcoin.

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