Update: Early on-chain review suggests Drift Protocol attacker prepared the exploit weeks in advance

Update: Early on-chain analysis from Ares indicates the alleged Drift Protocol attacker began setting the stage roughly three weeks before today's exploit. According to the analysis, the attacker minted 750 million units of a fake token dubbed "CarbonVote Token" (CVT) and seeded a Raydium pool with $500 in liquidity about three weeks ahead of time. The attacker then reportedly used a compromised Drift admin key today to list CVT as a new spot market on Drift, triggering the mechanism that enabled an exploit estimated at more than $250 million. If confirmed, the incident would rank as a potential ninth-largest exploit in DeFi history.