Help me beat Vibhu Use the code BP26-NOAH It's not a working code. You will pay full price and you will like it. For the culture.

RT @toly: 👑👑👑

We are live! Improved opsec. Contracts re-audited from scratch. I know this has been a long time coming for those of you impacted by the exploit. Every day the exchange was offline was revenue that could have been directed to the recovery fund. I personally appreciate your patience. In the wake of the incident, the last thing I wanted to do was rush security for the sake of earlier revenue, so we took our time and did things properly. This is the biggest step towards recovery. More announcements coming on the DFX launch and recovery pool. For now, the protocol is collecting fees which will be added to the recovery pool once it is live. It is a long journey to recovery, but every journey starts with the first step.

A personal note, not a Velocity update. I had just moved to nyc when Drift got hacked, ready to take Drift and my career to the next level. Instead I spent five months in fight mode, on calls with partners, investors, traders and friends, some of whom lost everything, putting out fires every day and trying to get the exchange back up and get people to come back. I couldn't undo what happened, all I could do was tell people we weren't giving up and would keep finding a way forward. There's a guilt that doesn't go away. People I talked to lost their jobs, their savings, everything they'd built, and I still have mine. That's why I'm not taking this job lightly. Now the audit's done and we're live in beta. I know coming back is a hard ask for anyone who lost money on Drift and I don't blame anyone who says no, but I'm grateful to everyone who's said yes. I can't promise how fast recovery goes but we'll keep going. Product ideas that generate revenue: DMs open. I'm left curved (our lawyers aren't)

Going to address this head on. We did not just audit the refactor diff from Drift to Velocity. We audited the *entire* codebase. This couldn't be further from a rush job. If we wanted to rush it, we could have just audited the diff, called the old code fine, and launched months ago. We wanted to err on the side of safety, which meant re-auditing the full codebase. This is expensive, and takes a long time. Drift is one of the largest Solana programs in existence with tens of thousands of lines of code. But it was the right thing to do, because safety is our priority. Yes, it's a lot of findings. But relative to the amount of code, it makes sense. Most findings were in pre-refactor code, and most of them would not result in LoF in any real situation. It was a herculean effort to (1) review this massive monolith, thanks auditors! (2) fix every issue no matter how small. That is why the launch has been pushed back so far.

I don't think people appreciate how hard it is to properly do cross-margin perps + lending together. Insane capital efficiency, but also insane levels of complexity. Drift was special. That's why I didn't want it to just die. Velocity is going to be awesome.

Audit will likely be complete within the week, just mopping up some remaining nuisance bugs. Alpha testing with a small cohort has been successful, now we're ready to hammer the new contracts with more liquidity, more volume. I know it seems like we're moving at a glacial pace, but when we open source you'll see the massive amounts of changes the contracts have undergone to improve safety. The team is taking safety extremely seriously, which is why we didn't just yolo launch to take advantage of fees from the recent market movements.

1/ After months in the making, Velocity private beta is going live. On-chain perps at our lowest fee tier of 0.02%, starting with your first trade. 20% on every referral, the highest rate we give, and it's yours.

If you are a signer on a multisig with admin control on a DeFi protocol, you should ONLY be signing using a separate device that you DON’T use to browse the internet, take video calls, vibe code, etc. Hardware wallets store your private key. But the computer you plug it into prepares the transaction. If you plug the hardware wallet into a computer doing everyday tasks, you cannot trust the payload. Many of the largest hacks this year could have been prevented by doing this. Every victim team describes the attack as complex, but fundamentally most of the boil down to getting access to the signing computer. Do you want all of your users’ funds to be taken and all of your hard work to get washed away? Switch with urgency. It is an extremely high-leverage action. MacBook Neos are pretty good for this. You can go cheaper too. If you are confused about this, please DM me and I will help you or put you in touch with our security team. Regardless of where you are building, we are happy to help. Security affects us all - hacks burn trust in the industry we know and love.

happy private beta day to those who care, it's been a grind getting it live but job's not done. to those with access, feel free to play around the exchange as much as you want to and reach out incase you find any issues/bugs we can't wait to open the protocol to everyone :)

. @VelocityDEX is back.

Today, Velocity enters Private Beta. This is an important step on the road to public launch and another step closer to getting the exchange live, generating revenue, and directing that revenue back into the Recovery Pool. There’s still work ahead, but we’re moving forward.

Velocity Private Beta is now live! Users who were whitelisted for access can now access the platform here: velocity.exchange

Seeing a lot of commentary and questions on the Drift token following the rebrand to @VelocityDEX. Here are some preliminary thoughts: The introduction of the DFX claim token sets up an interesting situation. With the majority of net revenue going to DFX, it's hard to envisage how the existing DRIFT token will interact or be a beneficiary of future revenues. It's akin to debtholder v.s equityholders; with the former eating first. Unsurprisingly, the DFX holders are the senior tranche here. Thus, the DRIFT token’s core functionality remains pure governance, at least until all DFX holders have been made whole. Moreover, a few individuals have identified the existence of new program. A new program does not default have a governance token in place. Often, the token is introduced later for projects. So there is a valid question of “does the existing token govern the new program?” By default no. A third party token could, but not by design, govern a separate network. Historically, migrations have been the most common means where an existing tokens for a network becomes an another ticker. They happen for all kinds of reasons from tokenomic changes to program updates. Projects like Aave (ETHlend), Aevo (Ribbon), Derive (Lyra) all went through a migration. Closer to home, @MetaDAOProject serves as the best example - the previous token was unmintable, the DAO's treasury exhausted at the time, alongside unit bias. My view (and this does not represent the view of the foundation) is that something has to change given the co-existence of DRIFT and DFX. What that exactly is will required more nuanced thought and discussion but ultimately a token within a network must have a reasonable pathway towards value accrual. Right now this is unclear.

Proof's 2 week v0 challenge has concluded. Thank you to all the traders who participated and gave us feedback. Stay tuned for the next activation. More info below.

“Drift is running away.” No, we’re not If we wanted to run, we would’ve run. We wouldn’t be here rebranding publicly, getting dragged every day, and still working day and night to relaunch. The recovery plan is live and public. Protocol revenue is going into the Recovery Pool. That has not changed. Changing the name doesn’t mean we’re pretending nothing happened. It doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t erase our responsibility to affected users. But also, money is not falling from the sky. I can’t snap my fingers and make $295M magically reappear. All we can do is stay, rebuild, make the platform safer, launch a better product, generate real revenue, and keep putting that revenue back toward recovery.

I'm seeing lots of "why are you putting money into rebrand you should be repaying users" Because I expect to see "why spending money?!" every step of the way, I want to make this very clear. The Tether deal is *not* a bailout. They are not just chucking money into the recovery pool. Tether is a business, not a charity. They are acting as a line of credit. Tether wants a top perp exchange running on USDT. I do not know the actual terms of the deal (I'm not on those conversations) but my understanding is that it's a line-of-credit matching of revenue that flows into the recovery pool. It all needs to be paid back (the full ~$300m). The credit just accelerates the payback, and leaves the protocol in debt to Tether rather than users if we get enough revenue. The important upshot: Users get $0 in Tether money unless there's revenue. The structure of the deal is intentional. Tether wants the best route to repaying users to be building a top perp exchange. Not a straight bailout with their money. What does this mean for users? It means your best chance of getting your money back is Velocity making revenue. If we throw every cent of runway we have into the recovery pool, you'll get $0 of Tether credit, and hardly any recovery pool $. The best way out is through. And through means proper rebranding, relaunch, and all of the hard work that goes with launching a perps dex.

New name. Cleaner architecture. Stronger security foundation. Drift is becoming Velocity, and our private beta is live with select partners & traders soon. This is the exchange we have been building toward.

We are in the process of changing @x handles. Please do not interact with @DriftProtocol and report it.

Looking for traders to help test Drift ahead of relaunch. We’re opening private beta soon and want feedback to make sure the experience is smooth, stable, and ready for users. If you’re interested in testing, DM me your SOL wallet and I’ll add you to the list.