Drift Co-Founder Cindy Leow Steps Down, Hands Rebuilt Velocity Exchange to New Team

Drift Protocol DRIFT$0.020+7.3% co-founder Cindy Leow is stepping down from the Solana perpetual futures exchange she helped build, which now operates as Velocity, she said in a post on X on 29 September 2026. Leow wrote that she is leaving "as the exchange relaunches and enters its next chapter," five months after an April attack forced a full rebuild, and named the five people who will run Velocity without her. Velocity's official account quoted the announcement three minutes later with a short reply: "Thank you, Cindy."

Leow started Drift five and a half years ago with Chris Heaney (@crispheaney), a co-founder she calls Z (@bigz_pubkey) and David (@davijlu). The exchange first launched on Solana in November 2021 and, by Leow's count, went on to handle more than $150 billion in trading, which she says made it one of the largest exchanges on the network.

Who runs Velocity after Cindy Leow steps down

Leow's post splits her responsibilities across five people. David (@davijlu), a co-founder, will continue the asset recovery and law enforcement work "along with Foundation." The engineer who posts as @redacted_noah, formerly head of protocol engineering at Helium Network HNT$0.474-0.3% and hired after the attack to lead the rebuild of Velocity's smart contracts, will keep building the exchange's technology. Leow named two features he is working on: a central limit order book (CLOB), which matches buyers and sellers at the prices they set, and a Prop AMM, a pool whose quotes are set by a professional market maker's own pricing program.

On the business side, @Defioppa, who previously led product at Binance, stays as Velocity's product lead. @tracybbd, who Leow says spoke personally to every trader and market maker on the exchange after the attack, takes partnerships and stakeholder relationships. @namanmtl, who joined from Binance and Trust Wallet, leads growth.

Leow credits Chris Heaney and Z, the technical co-founders, with building "every piece of the exchange stack," but her post does not say whether either will stay involved with Velocity. Leow framed her exit as a handover to "operators who can take it from one to ten" and wrote that she will now focus on "building bridges between Asia and the US" and on her local community in Southeast Asia, and that she will "actively continue to champion Velocity."

How Drift became Velocity: Tether backing and USDT settlement

In April 2026, Drift was hit by what Leow describes as "a state-level attack by DPRK, after a long-planned six months of social engineering infiltration." Within "ten sleepless nights," she wrote, the team closed a deal with Tether USDT$1.0000.0% that "put users on a path to recovery."

CoinDesk reported on 16 April 2026 that Tether committed up to $127.5 million and other partners $20 million, with part of the exchange's trading revenue going into a recovery pool for affected users. The same deal moved the exchange from Circle's USDC to Tether's stablecoin: Velocity's website, which also cites the up-to-$127.5 million Tether commitment, says trades now settle on-chain in USDT.

Leow's post calls the company "Drift, now @VelocityDEX," and does not mention the DRIFT token or say how it fits into Velocity.

Velocity's OtterSec audit, open-source code and public beta

Velocity published its code and an OtterSec audit on 17 September 2026. OtterSec recorded 154 findings, none of them critical, and Velocity says it fixed every high-severity finding in the deployed code. The repository's audit file dates the OtterSec review to 19 June to 20 July 2026, with the final report issued on 3 September, and says it covers the code Velocity added after forking Drift Protocol v2. According to the same blog post, Asymmetric Research reviewed operational security alongside the audit, and Velocity is now going through the Solana Foundation's STRIDE security review. Leow's post describes the audit as finalised by both OtterSec and Asymmetric Research.

The rebuilt exchange is narrower than Drift was. Velocity's blog says it now focuses on perpetual futures, with spot markets kept only as collateral and for borrowing and lending. The website lists BTC, ETH and SOL perpetuals at up to 20x leverage and HYPE at up to 10x, with tokenized stock markets marked as coming soon.

Leow describes 29 September as the relaunch. Velocity's own posts date the opening of its beta to all traders earlier: the exchange turned off its whitelist on 21 September and listed ZEC perpetuals the next day, with SOL, wBTC, wETH, ZEC and USDT all counting as collateral in a single account.

Velocity comes back to a Solana perps market that crossed $1.08 trillion in cumulative volume in August and that has added competition since April, including the Solana Foundation's Frontier Traders rewards season on Phoenix and Solflare. Leow's successors take over a rebuilt, open-source exchange with a Tether-backed recovery plan, and a CLOB and Prop AMM still to ship.