The Drift Protocol, that suffered a major $295 million hack in April, is gearing up to relaunch its operations after an ongoing temporary halt. On Thursday, Drift’s team outlined its roadmap for a relaunch. Ambitiously enough, the DeFi protocol’s comeback plan aims to establish itself as the largest USDT-based perps exchange on Solana.
Tracy Chow, the Business Development Lead at Drift, announced the development on X citing key changes within Drift’s team driven by the need to get more risk expertise to the platform.
Noah Prince, the former Head of Protocol Engineering at Helium, has been appointed at Drift’s Head of Protocol. As part of his new role, Prince will head a complete reboot to Drift with advanced security as the focus.
Prince has justified his decision to join Drift saying, “Trust is eroded. Things that are worthwhile are rarely easy, and this is no exception. I fully acknowledge I could be applying for a job at Wendy’s in six months. I genuinely believe that Drift provides a valuable set of primitives to the ecosystem and is worth saving.”
Drift has also tapped Gauntlet to assist it in curbing the risks of future security related issues. A known name in the DeFi ecosystem, Gauntlet is a firm that provides simulation-based risk management decentralized protocols.
“Together, Noah and the team from Gauntlet will overhaul the code, harden the platform against future attacks, and build a more resilient protocol for Drift’s relaunch,” the official statement from the DeFi platform said on Thursday.
Launched on Solana back in November 2021, Drift’s reputation and foundational architecture are rooted in being a perpetual-native exchange. Essentially, it allows traders to buy or sell perpetual futures contracts speculating on the possible future price of an asset. These contracts, unlike traditional futures, do not come with an expiration date. Instead, they rely on a continuous “funding rate” fee to tie the contract price closely to the underlying spot market price.
Explaining its future plans the platform noted, “Drift will relaunch as the largest USDT-based perpetual exchange on Solana, and the community has a direct stake in its success. Thanks to the strategic support package from Tether and other partners, we have been able to make meaningful progress toward that goal.”
As of now, Drift has not provided a definitive timeline by which its relaunch action plan will go into motion.
Meanwhile, the protocol is also continuing its work with threat intelligence firm Mandiant to get to the bottom of the April exploit. North Korean hacking group UNC6862 have been identified as the attackers by Mandiant.
Earlier in May, Drift had said that the bigger amount of the stolen crypto remains traceable in the blockchain, making it tough for the attacker to move funds around under the radar. Around 130,000 ETH — estimated to be worth $293 million– has been located within a few wallets which are now under heavy surveillance.
As part of its recovery plan, Drift plans to issue a “recovery token” to each affected user,to help them convert their losses into something they can track and eventually reclaim.
A recovery pool has been launched by the protocol — starting with roughly $3.8 million in protocol assets converted to stablecoins, with the ultimate goal of reaching $295.4 million to fully cover user losses. The fund will be replenished through platform earnings and outside investments. Some venture participants have also committed $20 million to help Drift with the recovery process alongside the $127.5 million that Tether has offered — contingent on the platform’s performance.
