Drift Initiates Exploit Recovery Claims, First Payouts Cover Barely Over 1% of Losses

Drift has begun processing recovery claims for users hit by its April 1 exploit, but the first cash payouts cover barely more than 1 percent of verified losses. The Drift Foundation opened claims and redemptions for DFX on October 1, 2026. DFX is a fixed-supply Solana SPL token issued one-for-one against each USDT of verified loss from the incident.

The total supply is locked at 299,500,810.998 tokens, and the foundation has said no further DFX will ever be minted.

The opening redemption rate sits near 0.0104 USDT per token.

That figure is simply the recovery pool balance divided by outstanding supply.

With roughly 3.1 million stablecoin USDT in the pool at launch, a holder who cashes out immediately recovers a little over one cent for every dollar lost.

Redeeming burns the tokens in the same transaction that pays out USDT, so early redemption is final and gives up any later claim on money that still enters the pool.

Users are not required to redeem at once.

After claiming from the wallet that controlled their Drift account on April 1, they can hold DFX, transfer it, or trade it on secondary venues such as Raydium.

Holding keeps a proportional claim on future deposits.

Because redemptions and any unclaimed tokens at the end of the window permanently reduce supply, later inflows are shared among fewer tokens.

The foundation’s own illustration notes that if 10 percent of supply were redeemed, each remaining token would receive about 11 percent more of every subsequent deposit.

Those figures are described as mechanics only, not a forecast or a promise of full repayment.

The pool is designed to grow from several sources until cumulative inflows match the full verified loss total.

Each day at 00:00 UTC, Velocity—the rebuilt exchange that formerly operated as Drift—directs a share of net protocol revenue into the pool in USDT.

That share steps up with daily revenue: 60 percent of the first 30,000 USDT, 70 percent of the band from 30,000 to 100,000 USDT, and 90 percent of anything above 100,000 USDT.

Net protocol revenue itself is the portion of trading fees left after allocations to the insurance fund and vAMM capital.

Tether has committed up to 127.5 million USDT toward relaunch and user recovery, and strategic partners have committed up to 20 million USDT.

Any stolen assets recovered through freezes, a bounty, or law enforcement are also directed into the pool.

Deposits stop once the pool has received the full amount of verified losses.

Claims must be made from the snapshot wallet that held the account on the day of the exploit, with a small SOL balance for network fees.

The portal at dfx.drift.trade checks eligibility via a Merkle proof and shows the exact allocation.

The claim window closes at 00:00 UTC on January 1, 2028; any DFX still unclaimed at that time will be burned, raising the share of future deposits for remaining holders.

Redemption itself can be done from any wallet that holds DFX and is irreversible.

The insurance fund, which the foundation says was unaffected, is a separate claim and is not part of DFX.

Early dashboard activity underscored how small the opening cash recovery is relative to the loss.

Reporting on the first day of redemptions cited roughly 216,480 DFX burned for about 2,250 USDT, against a pool still dominated by the protocol’s remaining assets rather than fresh revenue.

The structure guarantees that the redemption rate does not fall and that supply only shrinks, but it leaves most of the path back toward par dependent on sustained Velocity revenue, partner capital actually arriving, and any further recovery of stolen funds.



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