The decentralized finance (DeFi) project World Liberty Financial token WLFI, owned by the family of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, was officially launched on Tuesday (October 15). More than 665 million tokens have been sold within the day, and the final sales target is 20 billion tokens. As a platform governance token, WLFI enables users to participate in financial activities such as lending and creating liquidity pools.

Trump took the first step in the financial revolution of the United States. The WLFI token sale website suffered multiple interruptions shortly after it went online, but after recovery, it had more than 3,000 independent wallets. Although more than 665 million WLFI tokens have been sold, it is still far from the final goal of 20 billion, and sales fell far short of the fundraising goal of $300 million in the first few hours.

Sandy Peng, an advisor to WLFI and co-founder of the Scroll blockchain network, attributed the outage to heavy traffic. “The team didn’t expect this level of attention,” said Peng, whose Scroll network will host World Liberty Financial’s blockchain application.

According to Peng, the World Liberty Financial website, the official platform for the WLFI token sale, received 72 million unique visits in the first hour after it went live. The site went offline due to heavy traffic but has since been back online intermittently, apparently switching to a new web hosting service.

According to project officials, the WLFI token will be used to manage the World Liberty Financial platform, which is designed to allow users to participate in lending and other DeFi activities. The token, which is temporarily non-transferable, will give users voting rights on issues such as protocol upgrades, technical changes, promotional partnerships, and security risk oversight.

Trump is the chief cryptocurrency advocate at World Liberty Financial, the project said. His three sons, Eric Trump, Barron Trump and Donald Trump Jr., are listed as Web3 ambassadors.

The number of tokens for this public sale is about 20 billion, with an issue price of $0.015, or 1.5 cents per share, and a total fundraising target of $300 million. Including tokens that are not sold through the public sale, the total supply of tokens is 100 billion.

Currently, the WLFI token sale is limited to non-U.S. individuals and accredited U.S. investors.

World Liberty Financial’s top officials revealed on Monday that the project has whitelisted more than 100,000 accredited U.S. investors ahead of the token launch. The U.S. restrictions are intended to protect WLFI from violating U.S. securities regulations.

In the United States, accredited investors are authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission to invest in unregistered securities, such as pre-IPO stocks. Accredited investors must meet certain income and net worth criteria, such as an annual income of $200,000 and total assets of more than $1 million.

The release of a “golden paper” about WLFI on Tuesday revealed more details, including its distribution and specific role in the platform. World Liberty Financial is described as an integrated platform where users can borrow and lend cryptocurrencies, create liquidity pools and trade using stablecoins.

The token will allow holders to make suggestions for future changes to the platform, however, all WLFI tokens will be non-transferable, meaning they will be locked in a wallet or "smart contract" indefinitely and cannot be traded unless the rules are amended in the future. According to the WLFI team, all governance decisions will be in accordance with US regulations to ensure that any changes are legal.

An excerpt from the “Golden Thesis” states that WLFI firmly believes in supporting dollar-based stablecoins and DeFi applications to maintain the status of the dollar and ensure that it remains the global reserve currency for the next century without compromising the freedom provided by decentralized assets.

It added: “A key part of World Liberty Financial’s mission is to leverage the global reach and visibility of the Trump brand to bring as many Web2 users as possible into the Web3 world.”