Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Fu He How (@vincent 31515173)
As the US election approaches, Trump, one of the presidential candidates, has recently attracted much attention. In particular, the crypto project World Liberty Financial, which was founded by Trump's son, has attracted attention from the crypto industry and even the global financial industry.
Recently, CoinDesk disclosed many problems in the draft white paper of the project, especially the unreasonable token distribution ratio and the centralized governance structure, which seemed to run counter to the project's previous claim of "returning the power of finance to the people". World Liberty Financial subsequently responded to CoinDesk's report, but except for some irrelevant answers, it did not mention governance and token distribution. This not only failed to dispel public doubts, but was counterproductive, and once again increased doubts about the fairness of the project. (Note: The source of the draft white paper was sold by people in Trump's core circle).
Odaily Planet Daily integrates existing market information to unveil the mystery of the World Liberty Financial project for readers.
70% of tokens are distributed to stakeholders, nepotism
According to the draft white paper of World Liberty Financial obtained by CoinDesk, 70% of the project's governance token WLFI will be allocated to "insiders" such as founders, teams and service providers, and the remaining 30% will be distributed through public sales. In order to avoid the review of the U.S. SEC for violating securities laws, all WLFI tokens will not be transferable until the tokens are unlocked through the protocol governance process in a manner that does not violate relevant laws.
In other words, in the future, WLFI tokens will most likely not be able to enter exchanges for public trading, and can only be used as governance tokens within the platform, with dividend rights to be determined. To some extent, WLFI may be similar to unlisted equity, which can only be traded over the counter, and requires and informs project managers to change ownership.
The draft white paper also revealed that the project is built on the Ethereum lending platform Aave, and plans to promote the large-scale application of stablecoins and DeFi to help the United States become the "global crypto capital."
In CoinDesk’s report, they focused on criticizing the way World Liberty Financial distributed its coins, and quoted relevant industry insiders as saying “This is such a ridiculous joke” to satirize the project’s centralized governance issues.
World Liberty Financial is also associated with Dough Finance, a lending project that was recently hacked. Most of the team members came from Dough Finance, and Dough founder Zak Folkman was officially registered as the owner of World Liberty Financial LLC. In addition, World Liberty Financial may have directly copied the Dough Finance code in the early stages. It is difficult to say whether the code has certain bugs at this stage, which also makes the public doubt the security of the project.
(Note: Dough Finance was attacked by a flash loan transaction on July 12, and the hacker made a profit of about US$2.1 million, of which about 76 ETH (about US$260,000) has been returned by the white hat hacker. The attacker exploited the arbitrary call vulnerability in the Dough ConnectorDeleverageParaswap contract to transfer WETH directly from the vulnerable contract.)
In addition to the Dough Finance team members, the Trump family will play multiple roles in the project, with Trump being called the "Chief Cryptocurrency Advocate", Trump's two eldest sons serving as "Web3 Ambassadors", and Trump's youngest son serving as "DeFi Visionary".
Many of Trump's friends also play important roles in the project. For example, well-known real estate developer Steve Witkoff serves as head of institutional investment, Steve Witkoff's son Zach Witkoff serves as head of intelligence, crypto governance consulting company MetaleX Pro co-founder Alex Golubitsky serves as legal counsel, MetaleX Pro co-founder Gabriel Shapiro serves as crypto governance consultant, dating platform founder Zak Folkman serves as operations director, and venture capital company Pacer Capital founder Chase Herro serves as head of digital and strategy. Together, they form the leadership team of World Liberty Financial.
Judging from the disclosed team members, one can't help but doubt the professionalism of the project. After all, it is a replica of a stolen project, and the team members are nepotistic, and some members have nothing to do with the crypto industry.
Official response: Ensure project security
World Liberty Financial responded quickly to CoinDesk’s disclosure.
The project team emphasized that they are working with the world's top security companies to ensure the security of the project code. These partners include well-known Zokyo, Fuzzland, PeckShield and BlockSecTeam. The team said: "We are aware of how important the project we are building is and its potential impact on cryptocurrency and our country, especially the upcoming election. We dare not take it lightly. Security is our primary concern and we will adopt industry best practices to protect the safety of users' funds."
The project also made it clear that it will cooperate with the well-known lending project Aave to build a new DeFi lending platform on Ethereum, and will launch a credit account system and a simple interface to facilitate wallets or brokerage businesses to access the project. World Liberty Financial is not a fork of Aave, but cooperates with Aave to promote innovation and development in the DeFi field. The project does not intend to copy the existing DeFi protocol, but hopes to work with it to create a more powerful and secure decentralized financial platform.
In addition to clarifying the relevant disputes, World Liberty Financial also introduced the core goal of the project, which is to ensure that the US dollar continues to dominate global finance in the future by promoting stablecoins pegged to the US dollar. The project believes that the global dominance of the US dollar faces challenges from other countries, and the promotion of stablecoins will help maintain the US leadership in international finance.
Team member Steve Witkoff said that the project wants to enable people who are not approved by mainstream finance to obtain lending rights. "DeFi is about opening up credit for those who are excluded. Our credit market is the best in the world, but it still excludes many people from borrowing and pursuing the American dream. When I started my business, I found someone who believed in me - my father, who lent me $20,000. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have my business. World Free Finance will provide more people with the opportunity to pursue their dreams."
Judging from the response of World Liberty Financial, there was no response to the controversial token distribution and governance, which may prove the authenticity of the draft white paper obtained by CoinDesk. Its response only emphasized the security and originality of its protocol, which may also make it difficult for people who pay attention to the project and Trump to "buy it".
Conclusion
Previously, the market had speculated about World Liberty Financial, with options ranging from CeFi to payment. After CoinDesk’s disclosure, World Liberty Financial finally unveiled its mystery.
Although the project team has not responded to market questions, judging from the team members, it is highly likely that the core interests of the project are controlled by the Trump family. The specific details will be known after the official announcement. Considering the recent unfavorable public opinion, the official version of the white paper may be more relaxed and give up more interests.
One of the biggest challenges facing the World Liberty Financial project is that the X (original Twitter) accounts of Trump's wife Lara Trump and youngest daughter Tiffany Trump were hacked, and hackers used these accounts to promote a crypto scam similar to the project name. Although the project quickly issued a warning to remind users not to click on any suspicious links, many people believe that the Trump family can hardly control even their own Twitter accounts, so how can they ensure the security of the project they launched?
All of the above issues have made the crypto industry wonder about the real purpose of the Trump family's project. After all, the existing information seems to indicate that World Liberty Financial does not have a good operation and maintenance foundation, and Trump's favorable remarks in his speech about the crypto industry do not seem to be enough. Or, they are hoping that Trump will be re-elected, use political influence to increase the recognition of the project, certify their own projects from an official level, and replace Tether's market position by issuing large-scale US dollar stablecoins.
