Original author: Weilin, PANews
Trump's DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) made large-scale purchases of crypto assets in December, totaling nearly $45 million in expenditures, including ETH, cbBTC, LINK, AAVE, ENA, and the latest ONDO.
Since its launch in September, the project claims to be a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform. On December 13, the World Liberty Financial community passed its first proposal to deploy an Aave v3 instance. Although the project has made initial progress, the leadership team mostly consists of new faces, and the practicality and innovation of the project still have some uncertainty.
In December, made large-scale purchases of crypto assets, with total expenditures nearing $45 million.
According to blockchain data platform Lookonchain, since November 30, World Liberty Financial has purchased a large amount of crypto assets through a wallet, including $30 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) and $10 million worth of Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC). Other purchased assets include LINK, AAVE, ENA, and the latest purchase of $250,000 worth of Ondo tokens. The specific data of these purchases is as follows:
Used $30 million USDC to purchase 8,105 ETH at a unit price of $3,701;
Used $10 million USDC to purchase 103 cbBTC at a unit price of $97,181;
Used $2 million USDC to purchase 78,387 LINK at a unit price of $25.5;
Used $2 million USDC to purchase 6,137 AAVE at a unit price of $326;
Used $500,000 USDC to purchase 509,955 ENA at a unit price of $0.98;
Used $250,000 USDC to purchase 134,216 ONDO at a unit price of $1.86.
Additionally, although COW is not on World Liberty Financial's asset list, recent on-chain token purchases have used Cowswap, which is one of the DEXs most commonly used by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
World Liberty Financial launched in September, claiming to be a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for cryptocurrency trading, and listed former President Trump as the 'Chief Crypto Advocate,' with Trump's sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump serving as 'ambassadors.' Companies associated with the family are entitled to 75% of the net income.
The project has performed poorly in selling its eponymous token, World Liberty Financial (WLFI). According to the roadmap, $1.5 billion is the fully diluted valuation for the project, with the 'initial sale' plan aimed at raising $300 million by selling 20% of the token supply. However, as of December 17, 4.99 billion WLFI tokens had been sold, totaling $74.85 million at a unit price of $0.015, which is less than a quarter of the $300 million target. Notably, Sun Yuchen disclosed an investment of $30 million into WLFI, becoming the largest investor in the project. Other than that, no institutions have publicly announced investments in the project.
The WLFI community voted to pass its first proposal to deploy a lending instance based on Aave v3.
Meanwhile, the good news is that on December 13, the governance page of World Liberty Financial showed that the WLFI community voted to pass its first proposal to deploy a lending instance based on Aave v3 on the Ethereum mainnet.
As of December 16, Aave DAO has a treasury valued at $347 million. Initially, when World Liberty Financial announced that it would build on the Aave protocol, the Aave community was skeptical. However, in October, after World Liberty Financial proposed to allocate 7% of its WLFI tokens and 20% of future fees generated by WLF to the crypto collective managing the Aave protocol, Aave's sentiment changed.
The proposal suggests deploying an Aave v3 instance based on World Liberty Financial (WLF), focusing on:
Provide stablecoin liquidity for ETH and WBTC.
Expand the user base of the Aave protocol.
The proposal needs to be approved by AaveDAO and the WLF community governance. If the proposal is approved, users will be able to deposit USDC and USDT stablecoins, as well as ETH and wBTC on the protocol. These assets can be used as collateral for borrowing other assets on Aave.
The proposal mentions that the benefits for Aave include bringing a large number of new users and liquidity to Aave, establishing brand loyalty and awareness among new DeFi users, and consolidating Aave's leading position in the digital asset lending market.
Next, the proposal has several steps: 1. If consensus is reached on the temperature check (TEMP CHECK), it will be submitted to the Snapshot phase. 2. If the Snapshot vote passes, it moves to the ARFC phase. 3. Publish the standard ARFC and gather feedback from the community and service providers. 4. If the ARFC Snapshot passes, publish the AIP vote for final confirmation and execution.
The leadership team of WLFI is not familiar faces; what are their backgrounds?
Behind Trump's DeFi project are many unfamiliar faces to the crypto community. Besides Trump and his family members, the five co-founders of this project are Chase Herro, Zak Folkman, Steven Witkoff, Zach Witkoff, and Alex Witkoff.
Among them, Chase Herro's background is quite special; it has been reported that he has engaged in several businesses that seem unrelated to the crypto industry, including marijuana sales and weight loss products, and he flaunts luxury cars and private jet travels on social media, but he has little reputation in the crypto circle. The only crypto project he publicly participated in, Dough Finance, only attracted a few million dollars and suffered severe hacking attacks. A token he promoted on influencer Logan Paul's podcast plummeted by 96% after the promotion. In a speech in 2018, he referred to himself as 'the scum of the internet' and said regulators should 'kick people like me out.'
Additionally, another co-founder, Chase Herro's business partner Zak Folkman, previously ran a service called Date Hotter Girls, where he taught seminars on how to flirt with women, which has a somewhat controversial background.
As for Steven Witkoff, he is a friend known to Trump, also a real estate businessman, and previously donated $2 million to Trump's campaign. After Trump's victory, he was appointed as a special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff's sons Alex and Zach are listed as co-founders of World Liberty Financial.
In addition to these co-founders who are less familiar with the cryptocurrency market, the backgrounds of other specific business segment leaders appear more professional and closer to the crypto industry.
Rich Teo, who serves as the stablecoin and payment lead, is also an OG in the crypto space, co-founding the exchange itBit in 2012 and later co-founding the stablecoin company Paxos, where he currently serves as CEO for the Asia region. Additionally, Rich is an advisor for the AI-driven SocialFi project RepubliK and has retweeted many of the project's tweets.
Corey Caplan serves as the head of technical strategy; he is a co-founder of Dolomite. Dolomite is a DeFi platform that launched on Arbitrum One in October 2022 and has since expanded to other blockchain ecosystems, including Polygon's zkEVM, Mantle, and X Layer, offering various services such as margin trading, lending, and portfolio management.
Bogdan Purnavel serves as the chief developer; he was also a developer at Dough Finance, and his online nickname is 0x boga. The blockchain lead for World Liberty Financial is Octavian Lojnita. According to his online resume, he is from Romania and is a full-stack developer. Octavian Lojnita also previously worked at Dough Finance.
Alex Golubitsky serves as legal counsel. Alex Golubitsky is an international tax attorney with a career covering tax law, securities law, entity formation, contract drafting, and litigation. He is a partner at MetaLeX Pro, LLP, and serves as general counsel at Brisa Max Holdings VI, LLC.
In addition, World Liberty Financial also has an advisory team composed of venture capitalists, lawyers, and blockchain engineers. Sandy Peng, co-founder of the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Scroll, and Luke Pearson, general partner at Polychain Capital, are both advisors to the project.
Currently, World Liberty Financial's large-scale token purchases have triggered various evaluations from the outside.
Nansen research analyst Nicolai Søndergaard told Bloomberg that World Liberty Financial's token purchases may be 'to gain more trust or to promote its own project by drawing attention to these assets, as if these assets perform well, World Liberty Financial may also benefit.'
While World Liberty Financial's plan may sound innovative to those unfamiliar with cryptocurrency, startups like this are actually quite common, with few achieving success. Many such companies are simply set up to sell tokens and earn profits, as stated by Robot Ventures' general partner Tarun Chitra.
Overall, the Trump family's DeFi project World Liberty Financial showcases its ambitions in the crypto space through large-scale token purchases and collaboration with Aave, making its investment targets a focal point for investor interest. However, its leadership team is relatively unknown, and the project's practicality and innovation remain uncertain. Nevertheless, as a project initiated by the family of the 'Crypto President' of the United States, it will still attract widespread market attention, and the subsequent developments are worth monitoring.
