Solana Community Divided Over Drift’s Proposed Recovery Token and Q2 Relaunch

Three weeks after Tether announced its $150M Drift recovery plan, Solana’s OG perps venue has finally unveiled the mechanics of its upcoming redemption token.

Community feedback to the relaunch has been mixed. While critics have decried the redemption token strategy, others are relieved that they might still be able to walk away with some of their capital.

Solana’s perps race is finally about to begin in earnest, with several teams expected to breakout of testnet and beta phases and compete on the ultimate stage: mainnet.

Drift Unveils Plans for Recovery Token

On May 5th, Drift Protocol revealed a few more details surrounding its upcoming relaunch and recovery plan. After losing $295M to a sophisticated exploit, Drift’s path forward is starting to take shape, with the team finally outlining the proposed redemption mechanic behind the “Recovery Token” central to the protocol’s recovery.

According to the announcement, every wallet affected by the exploit will be issued with a proportional amount of ‘recovery tokens’. For every $1 of verified loss, traders will receive 1 token, representing their share of funds within Drift’s recovery pool.

The recovery pool will initially be seeded with $3.8M, sourced from the protocol’s remaining assets and swapped to $USDT. Redemption will become available to holders after the pool reaches $5M in TVL. Drift intends to funnel “a substantial portion” of protocol revenue into the pool, supplemented by additional partner capital and matched deployments from Tether up to $127M.

While many Drift users are relieved that progress is being made and the path forward is outlined, some Solana community members expressed disappointment with certain aspects of the strategy. Positions that were open at the time of the exploit have effectively been forcibly closed, causing traders to realize losses on positions that may have returned to profitability in the coming months.

Others have acknowledged that while the recovery plan represents a promising start towards making users whole, it may be several years before affected users see a meaningful return on their holdings.

Drift to Relaunch in Q2 without ‘Earn’ Products

Alongside the proposed recovery token mechanic, Drift Protocol has confirmed its intention to relaunch sometime in Q2. 

As outlined in the recovery plan published in mid-April, Drift will relaunch its perps product with a community-based multisig and fresh keys. The team has also committed to a full overhaul of its opsec practices. 

Notably, Drift will also discontinue its ‘Earn’ product, which previously became a cornerstone of Solana DeFi. Drift Earn became the yield engine for 20 ecosystem defi applications, many of which were hit hard by the hack, forcing business closure for teams like Carrot.

The Solana Perps Race is About to Begin

While Drift prepares its return to market, competitors are lining up ahead of what promises to be a fierce competition between trading venues to win Solana’s marginal perps trader. 

Currently in the midst of their private beta phase, Phoenix and Bullet are steadily drawing closer to their mainnet launch. While commentators have noted that Phoenix’s adoption has been somewhat slow so far, the protocol is likely to benefit from an influx of users from Jito’s upcoming JTX terminal, which will be integrating Phoenix perps under the hood.

Meanwhile, Bulk, an emerging contender who raised $8M in a seed round led by 6th Man Ventures in September 2025, is gearing up to enter the ring. After attracting over 10,000 wallets connected during testnet, Bulk co-founder Kobie McGlashan has announced earlier this week that the protocol’s mainnet launch was “imminent.”

While Solana’s emerging perps exchanges gear up for their respective public launches, GMTrade has stepped in to fill the void, leading the sector in 30D and open interest, based on DefiLlama data.

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