A wallet linked to the April Drift exploit transferred $61 million in Ethereum to Tornado Cash, with significant remaining funds still held by the exploiter.
Drift Protocol Exploit Wallet Activity
On Tuesday, wallets associated with the April 1 exploit of Drift Protocol transferred 25,700 Ethereum, valued at approximately $61.56 million, to Tornado Cash within a two-hour window. This activity marked a significant movement for addresses that had been inactive for around two months prior to this transaction.
Data from Arkham Intelligence indicates that these deposits were made in increments of 100 ETH, roughly $237,800 each, along with smaller amounts of 10 ETH. These deposit sizes align with the fixed pools used by the mixer, which enables users to withdraw funds from new addresses, effectively obscuring the transaction trail.
Remaining Holdings and Previous Transfers
Following Tuesday's transfers, the exploiter's 71 tracked addresses still hold 81,454 ETH, equivalent to about $198.58 million at current market prices. Additionally, these wallets contain around $561,600 in other cryptocurrencies, including USDT, USDC, Solana, and USDY.
This recent transfer follows an earlier round on July 23 and 24, when an address known as Drift Exploiter 4 deposited about 23,095 ETH, then valued at around $44.4 million, into the same mixer.
Details of the Original Exploit
The April exploit, which targeted Drift's vaults on the Solana blockchain, allowed the attacker to gain administrative access, introduce a counterfeit token, and subsequently borrow real liquidity. Drift's internal assessment estimated the total loss from the exploit at $295.7 million, primarily consisting of $159.3 million in Jupiter Liquidity Provider tokens and $71.4 million in USDC, most of which was later converted and transferred to Ethereum.
Recovery Efforts and Token Issuance
In light of the exploit, Drift, now operating as Velocity, launched a recovery initiative on October 1, issuing DFX recovery tokens at a ratio of one token per USDT of verified loss, amounting to approximately $299.5 million in total losses. At the start, the recovery pool contained about 3.1 million USDT, allowing early claimants to receive approximately 0.0104 USDT per token, translating to about a penny on the dollar.
The recovery pool is set to receive a daily percentage, ranging from 60% to 90%, of Velocity's net protocol revenue, increasing as daily earnings rise. Tether has also pledged up to $127.5 million in USDT to support the recovery and relaunch efforts. Any funds recovered through law enforcement actions or bounty programs will be added to this pool.
