Drift hacked for $280 million: victims angrily sue Circle for "negligence" in not freezing stolen assets

On April Fool’s Day, the largest hacking incident in DeFi history shocked the crypto industry, as Drift Protocol had up to $280 million in assets looted. Now, the fire has officially spread to the USD stablecoin issuer Circle—affected investors have filed a class-action lawsuit, angrily accusing the company of “standing by” at a critical moment and missing the golden opportunity to intercept the stolen funds.
On Tuesday, the law firm Gibbs Mura filed the lawsuit on behalf of the affected investors, accusing Circle of failing to freeze the USDC assets that were stolen promptly after the hacking incident. In a statement released on Wednesday, the plaintiffs’ legal team said:

Although Circle has the technical capability and contractual authority to freeze these funds at the level of technology and contract permissions, they did nothing.

** ZachXBT Slams 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, and even directly altered the withdrawal limits—instantly draining the liquidity pool. What’s even more unsettling is that after investigating the incident, Drift found that the hacker group had disguised itself as a quantitative trading firm and been lurking on the platform for as long as half a year; the meticulous criminal methods caused the entire event to attract intense market attention.
On-chain sleuth ZachXBT also questioned Circle’s actions, noting: “In the $280 million hacking case involving Drift, Circle had a full 6 hours of rescue time and could have frozen these stolen funds.”
ZachXBT further disclosed that at the time the incident occurred, it was during U.S. working hours, yet Circle chose to turn a blind eye, allowing the hacker to gradually transfer $230 million worth of USDC from Solana to Ethereum over several hours by using its own cross-chain transfer protocol. He couldn’t help but wonder:

Why can the crypto industry tolerate this kind of ‘refusal to act when someone is in trouble’?

If even a project with a total value locked (TVL) of over a hundred million dollars cannot get support when a major incident happens, what reason do crypto companies have to keep staying in the Circle ecosystem?

The complaint also raises a key question: Just 9 days before Drift was attacked, Circle made a big move to freeze 16 wallet addresses in another unrelated civil case. The plaintiffs believe this action fully demonstrates that Circle “not only has the ability to freeze funds, but also the willingness to carry it out,” yet in the Drift case it chose a passive response.
** Circle CEO Steps Up to Defend **
Facing an avalanche of criticism and lawsuit pressure, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire emphasized earlier this week at a press conference that Circle will only freeze USDC wallets upon instructions from law enforcement agencies or courts.
Jeremy Allaire said that if companies bypass existing legal procedures, improperly intervene in private disputes, and take action, it would put the company in a serious “ethical dilemma.” He said:

If the outside world believes Circle should ignore legal requirements and do what it wants to do and decide on its own, I think that’s a very dangerous proposal.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, Drift announced that it had secured a $127.5 million recovery plan proposed by Tether, and raised an additional $20 million from other partners, for a total of approximately $147.5 million.