Decentralized exchange Velocity, previously known as Drift, has launched a claims process for individuals who suffered financial losses during its April security breach, enabling them to acquire recovery tokens corresponding to their deficits.
The protocol announced on Thursday that participants are eligible to claim one DFX token per USDT lost. Token holders subsequently possess the choice to burn their DFX to redeem USDT straight from Drift’s remediation pool, trade them on secondary markets, or retain them in anticipation of additional remediation capital.
Choosing to hold the tokens should theoretically bring an individual nearer to complete restitution, because as tokens get destroyed, subsequent deposits get distributed among a smaller supply of DFX.
At present, each DFX is only redeemable for slightly more than 0.01 USDT, roughly equating to retrieving a single cent for every dollar that vanished.
By Friday, the DFX redemption and restoration interface for Velocity indicated that 216,480 DFX had been exchanged for approximately 2,250 USDT in distributions. The complete reserve sits at 3.11 million USDT, made up of protocol resources. Velocity additionally plans to channel between 60% and 90% of its net platform earnings into the remediation reserve, although following the initial day, this generated a mere 31 USDT.
The portal had not yet displayed any contributions from Tether, which had promised as much as $127.5 million to back the protocol’s relaunch and user restitution efforts. Additionally absent from the figures was the sum of up to $20 million pledged by key partners.
Asset recovery updates
In an update on Sept. 30, the Drift Foundation reported that approximately $295.4 million was drained during the April 1 incident. Security organization Mandiant attributed the attack to UNC6862, described as a North Korean threat actor.
The pilfered funds were transferred across bridges to Ethereum, where three hacker addresses continue to retain 107,165 ETH valued at nearly $286 million. A fourth address previously transferred 23,094 ETH via the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash back in July.
Roughly $9.2 million of the taken capital has been frozen up to this point, according to the foundation, with hopes that these funds will eventually enter the DFX remediation reserve once legal authorities grant clearance.
Originally published at https://www.theblock.co/news/ecosystems/2026-10-02-drift-opens-exploit-recovery-claims-initial-payouts-just-over-1-user-losses-417581.
