Solana’s DeFi TVL recovers above $6.5B after Drift hack wiped $285M

Six months after North Korean-linked hackers drained $285 million from Drift Protocol, Solana’s DeFi total value locked has climbed back to $6.5 billion. That figure represents a 38% jump in just two months, fueled by a SOL price surge and a carefully orchestrated recovery plan that included a $127.5 million commitment from Tether. What happened with the Drift exploit On April 1, 2026, attackers exploited Drift Protocol through a social engineering scheme that manipulated admin privileges. Rather than finding a flaw in the smart contracts themselves, the hackers used a fake collateral token to drain vaults from within the protocol’s own administrative infrastructure. Drift had more than $550 million in TVL before the attack. The $285 million loss represented roughly half of the protocol’s locked value, making it one of the largest DeFi exploits of the year. The breach was later attributed to North Korean-backed cyber actors. The immediate fallout saw Solana’s broader DeFi ecosystem post double-digit percentage drops in TVL as users pulled funds from multiple platforms. The recovery playbook On April 16, roughly two weeks after the exploit, Tether announced it would commit up to $12...