Drift protocol (DRIFT)

Drift Hack: $285M Stolen April 1, 2026. Drift Protocol, Solana's biggest perps DEX, lost $285 million in a matter of minutes. It's the second biggest hack in Solana history. But how it happened is honestly more interesting than how much got stolen. ➛ How It Happened The attack happened in four steps. And each step points less to a simple security bug, more to a design flaw. ➛ 1. Fake token ‣ A "CarbonVote Token" (CVT) was minted, a pool was opened on Raydium with just $500 liquidity, and the price was pushed to $1 through wash trading. So oracle feeds can be manipulated. ➛ 2. Oracle manipulation ‣ That inflated CVT price got reflected into the oracles, and Drift recognized it as a real asset. So the price source became a single point of failure. ➛ 3. Admin key got compromised ‣ Through social engineering, admin access was obtained, CVT got listed as a market, and withdrawal limits were removed. So the human factor is still the weakest link. ➛ 4. Fast withdrawals ‣ CVT was used as collateral to withdraw USDC, SOL, JLP, and WBTC. $285M. Gone. ➛ The attacker moved the funds right away: bridged part of it to ETH (19,913 ETH = $42.6M), swapped some on Hyperliquid from SOL into ETH, and sent the rest to Binance. And Circle? They were too slow to freeze the stolen USDC. That opened up a whole separate debate too. ➛ Elliptic, the blockchain analytics firm, linked the attack to North Korean hackers, consistent with the Lazarus Group's known playbook. The attack signatures are pretty clear: cross-chain laundering patterns, pre-positioned wallets, and test transactions before the main exploit. That's classic Lazarus Group playbook stuff. For context, Lazarus stole over $2 billion in 2025. Bybit alone was $1.46B. And in 2026, the pace didn't slow down it accelerated. ➛ The Domino Effect This is where the real issue starts. Drift's TVL was $534M before the hack. Within an hour, it dropped to $255M. Cut in half. But the damage didn't stay inside Drift. The Solana DeFi ecosystem is tightly connected. So when Drift broke: ‣ Protocols using Drift as collateral started facing liquidity stress ‣ DEX volumes across Solana fell back toward 2024 lows ‣ The DRIFT token dropped more than 40%, down to $0.06 ‣ Investor confidence got hit hard And this isn't just a Drift-specific thing. The same pattern showed up in the January 2026 Step Finance ~$27M treasury hack too. One protocol breaking triggered liquidity stress across other connected Solana protocols. Composability is DeFi's biggest strength. But it's also its biggest weakness.

24H Web3 News Recap #397 📰 Fear and Greed Index: 9/100 ▼ 1️⃣ Hacks & Security > Drift $285M hack attributed to North Korea via durable nonce social engineering > Resolv USR stablecoin hit for $25M; attacker minted 80M tokens maliciously 2️⃣ BTC & Macro > BTC breaks below $67K as Trump escalates Iran threats; equities lose $777B > ETH spot ETFs bleed $71M in outflows; BTC ETFs barely positive at +$8.99M 3️⃣ Regulation > Coinbase gets conditional OCC approval for national trust company charter > CLARITY Act stablecoin yield deal "very close"; Senate markup before April 13 recess targeted 4️⃣ AI x Crypto > x402 Foundation launches: Coinbase, Google, AWS, Visa build open AI agent payment standard > OpenAI acquires media company TBPN for low hundreds of millions per FT report 5️⃣ DeFi > SushiSwap launches perps powered by Hyperliquid with boosted point multipliers for early traders > Phantom wallet adds P&L tracking: total return, cost basis, realized gains for Solana tokens 6️⃣ Stablecoins > Q1 stablecoin supply hits $315B; $28T+ in transaction volume, decoupled from crypto prices > Circle launches cirBTC: 1:1 backed onchain-verifiable Bitcoin wrapper for DeFi protocols 7️⃣ Prediction Markets > Polymarket expands to traditional markets: equity ETFs, commodities, US stocks via Pyth Pro > Pumpcade raises $1M pre-seed led by Pumpfun, livestream prediction markets on-chain 8️⃣ NFTs & Memecoins > Metaplex March 2026 best month ever: 400,000+ Core assets minted > JONATHAN Solana memecoin pumps 1,400% on April Fools viral moment 9️⃣ CEX & Platform > Telegram Wallet adds perps: 50+ markets, 50x leverage, powered by Lighter > X to auto-lock accounts posting crypto for the first time, anti-scam identity check required >>> There's quite a bit of interesting news today. What did you like the most?

DPRK's playbook is evolving and with latest ai upgrade will only go rampant (and attacking surface expands too with agentic workflow), every crypto players pls be very vigilant 🙏 the current attack vectors we know so far Drift> Malicious repo infiltration via VSCode (how they get access to the dev environment??) Bybit>Supply chain hit. Injected malicious JS into the Safe Wallet signing frontend Radiant> Social engineering via Telegram and fake PDF

Drift exploit continues to spread: currently 20 protocols are affected. The biggest loss so far is at PrimeNumbersFi with over $10 million USD lost. Many protocols have paused deposits/withdrawals, disabled borrowing, or isolated exposure to prevent further damage. What is clear here is that DeFi is extremely interconnected and an exploit can trigger chain reactions.

Three noteworthy events added in the last day ✨ $DRIFT (@driftprotocol) 01 Apr 2026 Durable Nonce Attack 👉 https://t.co/0BVDEVJAak $SOL (@solana) 02 Apr 2026 SoFi Banking 👉 https://t.co/OloXH5ldeG $ADI (@adichain_) 02 Apr 2026 ADI Predictstreet 👉 https://t.co/NCjK7mTOxS More highlights 👉 https://t.co/LhZzIYHgE0

Only this year, there have been over 35 smaller or larger incidents, and this unfortunate @DriftProtocol https://t.co/9N8rxaM8ui

Drift Protocol just revealed a serious $270M hack on its Solana based DEX. This is not a joke. All deposits and withdrawals have been paused while security teams investigate the situation. The DRIFT token fell more than 26% in just 24 hours and is now trading around $0.05. This attack hits Solana DeFi hard, showing how quickly things can change in the crypto world. Users should stay alert, follow updates closely, and manage their risks carefully. #Solana #Crypto #BingX

Full details on the Drift attack