Article source: Weilin
Author: Weilin, PANews
Trump's DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) made significant purchases of crypto assets in December, spending nearly 45 million USD, 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 approved the 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 remain uncertain.
In December, made significant purchases of crypto assets, totaling nearly 45 million USD.
According to the blockchain data platform Lookonchain, World Liberty Financial has made substantial crypto asset purchases since November 30 through a wallet, including 30 million USD worth of Ethereum (ETH) and 10 million USD worth of Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC). Other assets purchased include LINK, AAVE, ENA, and the latest purchase of 250,000 USD worth of Ondo tokens. The specific details of these purchases are as follows:
Purchased 8,105 ETH for 30 million USDC, unit price 3,701 USD;
Purchased 103 cbBTC for 10 million USDC, unit price 97,181 USD;
Purchased 78,387 LINK for 2 million USDC, unit price 25.5 USD;
Purchased 6,137 AAVE for 2 million USDC, unit price 326 USD;
Purchased 509,955 ENA for 500,000 USDC, unit price 0.98 USD;
Purchased 134,216 ONDO for 250,000 USDC, unit price 1.86 USD.
Additionally, although COW is not listed among World Liberty Financial's assets, recent on-chain token purchases have used Cowswap, one of the DEXs most commonly used by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
World Liberty Financial was launched in September, claiming to be a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for cryptocurrency trading, with the elected president Trump listed as the 'chief crypto advocate.' Trump's sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Barron Trump serve as 'ambassadors.' Companies related to this family are entitled to 75% of the net income.
The project has performed poorly in selling its namesake token World Liberty Financial (WLFI). According to the roadmap, the total diluted valuation for this project is 1.5 billion USD, with the WLFI 'initial sale' plan raising 300 million USD to sell 20% of the token supply. However, as of December 17, 4.99 billion WLFI has been sold, totaling 74.85 million USD at a unit price of 0.015 USD, which is less than a quarter of the 300 million USD target. Notably, Sun Yuchen disclosed that he invested 30 million USD in WLFI, becoming the largest investor in the project. Besides that, no institutions have announced investments in the project.
The WLFI community voted to approve the first proposal to deploy a lending instance based on Aave v3.
Meanwhile, the good news is that on December 13, the World Liberty Financial governance page showed that the WLFI community voted to approve the first proposal to deploy a lending instance based on Aave v3 on the Ethereum mainnet.
As of December 16, Aave DAO has a treasury worth 347 million USD. Initially, when World Liberty Financial announced plans to 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 Aave DAO managing the Aave protocol, the situation 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.
Proposals need 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 to Aave include bringing a large number of new users and liquidity to Aave, establishing brand loyalty and awareness among new DeFi users, and solidifying Aave's leading position in the digital asset lending market.
Next, the proposal has several steps: 1. If the temperature check (TEMP CHECK) reaches a consensus, it is submitted to the Snapshot phase. 2. If Snapshot voting passes, it enters the ARFC stage. 3. Publish the standard ARFC and collect feedback from the community and service providers. 4. If the ARFC Snapshot passes, publish the AIP vote for final confirmation and execution.
Who are the unfamiliar faces on the WLFI leadership team?
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 has a relatively unusual background; he has reportedly engaged in several businesses seemingly unrelated to the crypto industry, including marijuana sales and weight loss products, and has boasted of luxury cars and private jet travels on social media, but has little reputation in the crypto community. The only crypto project he has publicly participated in, Dough Finance, attracted only a few million dollars and suffered a severe hack. A token he promoted on influencer Logan Paul's podcast plummeted by 96% after being promoted. In a speech in 2018, he referred to himself as 'the internet's pariah' and stated that 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 how to pick up women, which has a relatively controversial background.
As for Steven Witkoff, he is a familiar friend of Trump and a real estate businessman, having donated 2 million USD to Trump's campaign. After Trump's victory, he was appointed as a Middle East envoy. Witkoff's sons Alex and Zach are listed as co-founders of World Liberty Financial.
In addition to these co-founders who are relatively far from the crypto market, the backgrounds of other specific business segment leaders appear to be more professional and closer to the crypto industry.
Rich Teo, responsible for stablecoins and payments, is also an OG in the crypto field, co-founding the exchange itBit in 2012, and later co-founding the stablecoin company Paxos, where he currently serves as the CEO for Paxos in Asia. In addition, Rich is also an advisor to the AI-driven SocialFi project RepubliK and has retweeted many of its tweets on Twitter.
Corey Caplan serves as the Chief Technical Strategist; he is a co-founder of Dolomite, a DeFi platform launched in October 2022 on Arbitrum One, which has since expanded to other blockchain ecosystems, including Polygon's zkEVM, Mantle, and X Layer, offering various services, including 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 0xboga. The blockchain lead of World Liberty Financial is Octavian Lojnita. According to his online resume, he is from Romania and is a full-stack developer. Octavian Lojnita previously also worked at Dough Finance.
Alex Golubitsky serves as legal counsel. Alex Golubitsky is an international tax attorney with a career spanning 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 has an advisory team composed of venture capitalists, lawyers, and blockchain engineers. Sandy Peng, co-founder of the Ethereum layer two blockchain Scroll, and Luke Pearson, general partner at Polychain Capital, are both advisors to the project.
Currently, the large-scale token purchases by World Liberty Financial have sparked mixed reactions from the outside world.
Nansen research analyst Nicolai Søndergaard told Bloomberg that World Liberty Financial's token purchases might be 'to gain more trust, or to promote the development of its own project by drawing attention to these assets, as if these assets perform well, World Liberty Financial may also benefit.'
Although to those unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies, World Liberty Financial's plans may sound innovative, startups like this are actually quite common, with very few succeeding. Many such companies are established merely to sell tokens and make profits, as previously stated by Tarun Chitra, a general partner at Robot Ventures.
Overall, the Trump family's DeFi project World Liberty Financial showcases its ambitions in the crypto space through significant token purchases and collaboration with Aave. Their investment targets also serve as a barometer for investor interest. However, the leadership team remains relatively unfamiliar, and the project's practicality and innovation still hold uncertainty. Nevertheless, as a project initiated by the family of America's 'crypto president,' it will attract widespread market attention, and its future developments warrant further scrutiny.
