Cindy Leow, co-founder and CEO of Velocity DEX, will step down effective September 29, 2026, completing a 5.5-year tenure that ended with the platform's full recovery from one of the largest exploits in decentralized finance history.

Leow built the platform — originally launched as Drift Protocol on Solana in November 2021 — from the ground up and steered it through a security incident that drained more than $280 million on April 1, 2026. The breach was attributed to UNC6862, a group affiliated with the Lazarus hacking collective. Her departure comes just weeks after Velocity DEX completed its full public relaunch in September 2026.

The timing appears deliberate. Leow spent the six months following the exploit rebuilding the platform, and with that reconstruction finished, she is handing leadership to a team facing a fundamentally different mandate: scaling the exchange rather than repairing it.

From $150 billion in volume to ground zero

Before the breach, Drift Protocol had become one of the more successful perpetual futures exchanges in DeFi, recording more than $150 billion in cumulative trading volume since launch. The April 1 exploit forced the entire platform offline and triggered an extended triage period.

The remediation effort was comprehensive. The team engaged OtterSec for security audits, rotated all keys, redesigned the community multisig structure, and open-sourced the entire codebase for public review. A new program address was deployed, and every operational protocol was revised.

The financial recovery ran in parallel. Velocity DEX established a protocol revenue-funded pool to begin addressing user losses and secured a credit line arrangement with Tether to manage liquidity during the rebuilding phase — a notable example of a stablecoin issuer extending treasury support to a compromised DeFi venue.

Rebrand and relaunch

In July 2026, Drift Protocol formally rebranded to Velocity DEX. Private beta testing began in mid-2026 with a small cohort of traders stress-testing the new systems, and the full public launch followed in September. The relaunched platform features enhanced architecture, improved risk controls, and a shift toward USDT settlement as the default collateral — a structural change consistent with the liquidity arrangement involving Tether.

A builder's exit

Leow has described herself as a builder who thrives on taking projects from zero to one. Her tenure spans the entire lifecycle of the project: the original Solana launch, peak trading volumes, the worst security incident in its history, and the reconstruction that followed.

The remaining leadership team includes David and Noah Prince, both formerly of Binance. Their mandate shifts from crisis recovery to operational scaling — restoring the market share and volume trajectory the platform held before the exploit.

The transition will test whether Velocity DEX can convert a rebuilt infrastructure stack and a rebranded identity into renewed trader confidence, with the post-relaunch months serving as the first real measure of whether the recovery holds under live market conditions.