The law firm Gibbs Mura filed the lawsuit on Tuesday on behalf of Drift investors against Circle. The core claim is that the USDC issuer failed to freeze the stolen funds, even though it had both the technical capability and legal authority to do so.
Within six hours after the $280M exploit via a cross-chain protocol, more than $230M in USDC was moved from Solana to Ethereum — across more than 100 transactions — and not a single address was blocked. The attorneys emphasized that just nine days before the hack, the company had frozen 16 wallets as part of another civil case. In other words, the tools were there, but they were not used.
The lawsuit is not the first blow to the issuer’s reputation in the case. In early April, on-chain investigator ZachXBT publicly criticized Circle for its inaction, and on April 9, the company’s stock dropped after Compass Point downgraded it to a sell rating.
Meanwhile, Drift has reached a partial compensation deal: $127.5M from Tether and $20M from other partners. The platform now plans to relaunch as the largest perpetual DEX on Solana, this time built around USDT.