TechFlow News, April 9: U.S. law firm Gibbs Mura has launched a class-action litigation investigation into the April 1, 2026, hack of Drift Protocol, reviewing potential investor claims against Circle Internet Financial.
The attack resulted in the theft of approximately $280 million to $285 million in assets. Subsequently, the attacker transferred over $230 million worth of USDC across chains to Ethereum via Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP), with Circle taking no action to freeze the funds throughout the incident. Notably, just nine days prior to this event, Circle had proactively frozen 16 business wallets in a separate civil dispute. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic suspects that this attack may be linked to a North Korea–backed hacking group.
As a result of the attack, Drift Protocol’s total value locked (TVL) plummeted from $550 million to below $250 million, the DRIFT token price dropped by over 40%, and at least 20 DeFi protocols suffered indirect losses.
