Drift, the Solana perps exchange hit by a roughly $285 million exploit in April, is rebranding to Velocity before its recovery token DFX can be claimed, redeemed or transferred.
The team announced the name change on X on July 1, saying Velocity better reflects "the new and improved platform that we are building."
The Velocity team
The post framed the rebrand as a clean break from Drift's old architecture, old security setup and old identity, though no details were shared.
The team also said it plans to release a private beta to selected partners and traders in the coming days, as it works toward rebuilding "the most robust perps exchange on Solana."
- But users' replies weren't nearly as clean. Some asked what would happen to the DRIFT token, while others argued that branding was never the real problem.
Drift's April 1 exploit was one of the biggest DeFi failures of the year, with the platform later saying stolen assets totaled about $295.7 million.
Velocity's head of protocol, Noah, pushed back on the "repay before rebrand" criticism by arguing in an X post that the rebrand is part of the relaunch strategy.
Noah also added that Tether's support "is not a bailout" but a line of credit tied to revenue flowing into the recovery pool, meaning users' best chance of getting repaid depends on Velocity becoming a revenue-generating exchange again.
- For context, Drift secured up to nearly $150 million in combined support from Tether and other partners, including up to $127.5 million from Tether and $20 million from others, after Circle came under fire for not swiftly freezing stolen USDC tied to the April exploit.
Drift has been trying to make the relaunch itself part of the recovery plan. In June, the team said its "sole focus" was reopening a revenue-generating platform, since the relaunched exchange is supposed to help fund the recovery pool for affected users.
- Drift's recovery framework includes DFX, a separate recovery token representing verified losses from the April incident, but the claim window is still listed as "to be announced."
- The Insurance Fund is a separate case. Drift claims it wasn't affected by the incident, adding that depositors' assets remain intact. But even there, the portal still lists the claim window as "to be announced."
- The team has also tried to address the security question. In a June update, Drift said it hired Mandiant for an independent forensic review and that Mandiant attributed the attack to UNC6862, a North Korean threat group.
- As of press time, Drift hasn't published further details from that review.