Drift Launches Recovery Plan Following Hacker Incident: Affected Users to Receive 'Recovery Tokens' for Compensation

On May 6, Drift Protocol announced a recovery plan for users affected by the hacker incident on April 1: each impacted wallet will receive ‘recovery tokens’, with each token representing $1 of verified loss, serving as a proportional claim certificate for the recovery pool. The recovery pool is initially funded with approximately $3.8 million USDT converted from the protocol’s remaining assets, and will continue to grow each quarter through a significant portion of the trading platform’s net income, additional funding from partners, and up to $127.5 million in matching deployment from Tether. The insurance fund was not affected by the hacker incident, and whether it will be used for user compensation or injected into the recovery pool will be decided through governance proposals and DAO voting. Redemption mechanism: Redemption will be opened when the recovery pool exceeds $5 million. Redemption price = total value of the recovery fund ÷ total number of unredeemed recovery tokens. Users can redeem at any time, but early redemption forfeits any remaining claim rights; users who choose to wait can receive a higher proportion of compensation as the pool grows. The official statement emphasizes that this is not an immediate full refund, but rather a way for users to share in the future growth of the protocol. Drift plans to relaunch in Q2 2026 with a new program, new address, and rotating keys, focusing on perpetual contracts and selected markets. All major decisions will require DAO voting.