Velocity DEX CEO Cindy Leow steps down after relaunch

Cindy Leow, the co-founder who built what was once Drift Protocol from scratch on Solana, is walking away from Velocity DEX effective September 29, 2026. Her departure comes just weeks after the platform completed a full public relaunch following one of the most devastating exploits in DeFi history.

The timing is deliberate. Leow spent the last six months rebuilding a platform that lost more than $280 million in an April 1 security breach linked to the Lazarus-affiliated group UNC6862. Now that the reconstruction is done, she’s handing the keys to a leadership team tasked with a fundamentally different job: scaling.

From $150B in volume to ground zero

Before everything went sideways, Velocity DEX (then Drift Protocol) had quietly become one of the more successful perpetual futures exchanges in decentralized finance. The platform racked up more than $150 billion in cumulative trading volume since its November 2021 launch on Solana.

Then came April 1, 2026. The exploit drained over $280 million from the protocol, forcing the entire platform offline.

What followed was an extended period of triage. The team brought in 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. Every operational protocol was revised.

The financial recovery was equally aggressive. The team established a protocol revenue-funded pool to begin addressing losses and secured a credit line arrangement with Tether to manage liquidity during the rebuilding phase.

The rebrand and relaunch

In July 2026, Drift Protocol formally rebranded to Velocity DEX. Private beta testing began in mid-2026, with a small group of traders stress-testing the new systems. The full public launch arrived in September, bringing enhanced architecture, improved risk controls, and a shift toward USDT settlement as the default.

Why Leow is leaving now

Leow has described herself as a builder who thrives on taking projects from zero to one. The remaining leadership team includes David and Noah Prince, both of whom have experience at Binance.

Leow’s 5.5-year tenure spans the entire lifecycle of the project, from its original Solana launch through its peak trading volumes and through the worst security incident in its history.