Drift hacked for $280 million: victims angrily sue Circle for "failing to rescue" and not freezing stolen assets

On April Fool’s Day, the largest hacker attack in DeFi history shocked the crypto world, with Drift Protocol’s assets worth up to $280 million being looted. Now, the fire has officially spread to the US dollar stablecoin issuer Circle — affected investors have launched a class-action lawsuit, angrily accusing the company of “standing by” at a critical moment, missing the golden opportunity to intercept the stolen funds.
Law firm Gibbs Mura filed the lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of the affected investors, alleging that Circle failed to freeze the stolen USDC assets promptly after the hacker incident. In a statement released on Wednesday, the plaintiff’s legal team said:

Despite having the technical capability and contractual authority to freeze these funds, Circle did nothing.

ZachXBT Criticizes Circle for Missing the Golden 6 Hours
Looking back at this shocking hacking case, the Drift team revealed that the hacker not only illegally gained access to the platform, implanted malicious assets, but also directly altered withdrawal limits, draining the liquidity pool in an instant. Even more chilling, Drift’s subsequent investigation found that the hacker group disguised itself as a quantitative trading firm and had been lurking on the platform for up to half a year. The meticulous criminal tactics drew significant market attention.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT also questioned Circle’s actions, pointing out: “In the $280 million hacker case involving Drift, Circle had a full 6 hours to intervene and freeze the stolen funds.”
ZachXBT further disclosed that at the time of the incident, it was during U.S. working hours, yet Circle chose to do nothing, allowing the hacker to use its cross-chain transfer protocol to move $230 million USDC from Solana to Ethereum over several hours. He couldn’t help but wonder:

Why can the crypto industry tolerate such ‘watching death without rescue’ behavior?

If even a project with a locked-in TVL of hundreds of millions of dollars cannot get support during a major incident, what reason do crypto companies have to stay within Circle’s ecosystem?

The lawsuit also raises a key question: Just nine days before Drift was attacked, Circle had aggressively frozen 16 wallet addresses in another unrelated civil case. The plaintiffs believe this action fully proves that Circle “not only has the ability to freeze funds but also the willingness to do so,” yet in the Drift case, it chose a passive response.
Circle CEO Speaks Out in Defense
Facing mounting criticism and legal pressure, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire emphasized earlier this week at a press conference that Circle only freezes USDC wallets upon instructions from law enforcement agencies or courts.
Allaire stated that if companies bypass established legal procedures and intervene in private disputes on their own, it would put the company in a serious “ethical dilemma.” He said:

If the outside world believes Circle should ignore legal regulations and act on its own accord, I think that is a very dangerous proposition.

Meanwhile, Drift announced on Thursday that it has secured a $127.5 million recovery plan from Tether and raised an additional $20 million from other partners, totaling approximately $147.5 million.