Drift, the Solana-based perpetuals exchange, opened its DFX recovery claims on October 1, giving victims of the protocol’s April 1 exploit a way to claim a token tied to their losses. The first redemptions recover only about 1% of verified losses: the recovery pool holds roughly 3.1 million USDT against a fixed supply of 299,500,810.998 DFX tokens, the Drift Foundation said.
How the DFX claim works
Each DFX represents one USDT of verified loss from the April 1 exploit . It is a standard SPL token on Solana, freely transferable and tradable on Raydium, and no new DFX will ever be minted. DFX is separate from the DRIFT governance token, so its capped supply cannot be diluted by later issuance. To claim, users connect the wallet that controlled their Drift account on April 1; the portal checks the address against the loss snapshot with a Merkle proof and shows an exact allocation. Holders can then redeem DFX for USDT, sell it, or keep it as a claim on the pool. A separate Insurance Fund claim sits alongside DFX with its own terms.
Where the recovery funding comes from
The pool is topped up once a day at 00:00 UTC from Velocity’s net protocol revenue, which flows in at a 60% rate on the first 30,000 USDT of daily revenue, 70% between 30,000 and 100,000 USDT, and 90% above that. Tether has committed up to 127.5 million USDT and strategic partners up to 20 million USDT to support the relaunch and user recovery, the Drift Foundation said. Deposits continue until the pool has received the full amount of verified losses in total. The effort lands in a difficult stretch for DeFi security, after exploits such as the recent NEAR Intents cross-chain breach .
What early redemption means
A holder who redeems at launch receives about 0.0104 USDT per DFX and burns the token. Because the redemption amount is the pool balance divided by the outstanding supply, it never falls while the supply only shrinks. Future deposits are shared among the remaining holders: if 10% of the supply redeems, each remaining DFX receives about 11% more of every later deposit. The design lets every holder exit early or wait for the pool to grow. Redemptions are final and round down to the nearest 0.000001 USDT. The claim window closes on January 1, 2028, when any unclaimed DFX is permanently burned.
