The recovery pool starts with USD 3.8 million, less than 2% of the USD 295 million stolen.
Whoever redeems their token before the pool matures will lose their power to claim the remaining funds.
One month after the hack that drained $295 million, the team behind decentralized exchange (DEX) Drift published its recovery plan for affected users today, May 5. It also announced that it plans to relaunch the platform in the second quarter of 2026 with a focus on perpetual futures and structural security changes.
According to the statement, each wallet impacted by the April 1 exploit will receive a recovery token representing one dollar of verified loss and a proportional share in a compensation pool.
The redemption mechanism has a condition that affected users must consider. This system opens when the pool exceeds USD 5 million and operates under the following formula: the value of each token at the time of redemption depends on how much money the pool has accumulated and how many tokens are in circulation (the larger the pool and the smaller the number of tokens, the higher the redemption price).
According to the advertisementwhoever redeems before the pool reaches total losses (USD 295 million) waives its right to the remaining funds in the pool. Whoever waits can benefit from the growth of the pool as new funds are accumulated.
The pool starts with approximately $3.8 million in protocol assets converted to the USDT stablecoin, less than 2% of the total amount hacked. From there it will grow through three sources, as explained by Drift:
- A substantial portion of the exchange’s quarterly net income, although they did not specify what percentage.
- Up to USD 127.5 million committed by Tether (conditional on the exchange’s previous quarter’s revenue, with no defined schedule).
- Up to an additional USD 20 million from strategic partners.
Decisions on the final mechanism, including the treatment of the protocol’s insurance fund, depend on governance proposals and voting by Drift governance.
Meanwhile, the majority of the stolen funds remain unrecovered. According to the statement, approximately USD 293 million in ether (ETH) remain concentrated in four wallets of the attackermonitored and marked on exchanges, but outside the scope of the protocol.
The biggest hack in a record month
The Drift exploit on April 1 was the biggest hit of a month that will remain in the memory of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. As reported by CriptoNoticias, April recorded more than 30 hacks of DeFi protocols, with total losses of approximately USD 635 million, 78% of everything stolen in the ecosystem during 2026.
The attack on Drift, with USD 295 million, topped that list and also It was the biggest hack of the month on Solana since 2022. The attacker combined social engineering with a governance exploit to drain that network’s leading decentralized perpetual futures exchange.
Behind the Drift attack, the April 18 Kelp DAO hack, worth $293 million, was the second-largest exploit of April.