Pyra shuts down its Solana crypto card service after the Drift hack

Pyra is closing its crypto card product after months of trying to recover from the April hack of the Drift protocol, which disrupted the platform and affected customers. For PSPs and high-risk merchants, the useful detail is simple: when the underlying DeFi rails break, the card layer can go with them.

1. Pyra has stopped onboarding new users, deactivated existing cards, and said its mobile app will soon be shut down. To give customers a way out, the company plans to launch a dedicated web portal.
2. Through that portal, users will be able to manage open positions, withdraw funds, and export private keys. Pyra said these services will remain available until 15 September.
3. The company also said it plans to distribute Drift recovery tokens to affected users once the coins become available.
4. Back in April, right after the hack, Pyra said it was working with Drift to restore the service and looking for ways to resume operations. It also said it was actively working on a relaunch with a new lending protocol, but those plans were ultimately abandoned.
5. Pyra combined banking services with decentralized finance (DeFi): users could deposit crypto, earn yield through investment strategies, and spend assets with payment cards. The core trading systems were powered by Drift.

The hack on Drift in April led to the theft of about $285 million and froze liquidity across roughly 20 related protocols in the Solana ecosystem. That is the part operators care about: the payment product may look like a card business, but the settlement and liquidity risk sits one layer down.