Author: Chloe, PANews
Starting last month, former U.S. President Trump and his family began to warm up the DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI), and even declared that they would ensure that the United States becomes a cryptocurrency center. On September 17, the Trump family announced the official launch of World Liberty Financial, which will promote the adoption of stablecoins and enhance the dominance of the U.S. dollar in the future. And to meet regulatory compliance needs, WLFI intends to become a fully SEC-regulated institution, meaning that all buyers will be limited to U.S. accredited investors.
Gained support from the Trump family and cryptographers, but has not disclosed any more substantive information.
At the end of last month, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., announced that he would launch a DeFi-type cryptocurrency project, saying that the project aims to make finance great again and put power back into the hands of the American people. On August 29, WLFI was launched. The project provides cryptocurrency lending services on the Ethereum blockchain network, a DeFi project similar to the cryptocurrency banking platform, and subsequently announced some information.
At this press conference, Zak Folkman, who is responsible for WLFI strategy and operations, stated that the project will not attempt to create completely novel and unprecedented financial instruments. Instead, the team will likely adopt existing concepts and technologies that have proven effective. WLFI’s focus is on simplifying and improving existing solutions rather than inventing entirely new financial products. “Our goal is to build projects that are easy to use and simple. , you don’t need to call your friends and ask them to teach you how to use it.”
However, WLFI did not announce more substantive information such as more operating models, technical paths, etc., and instead relied more on the background of team members to build momentum.
Judging from the team members, in addition to members of the Trump family, there are also many encryption people. The white paper shows that many Trump family members serve in various roles on the WLFI team. Among them, Trump is listed as the "chief cryptocurrency advocate". He endorsed the project at the WLFI conference, including expressing his optimism about cryptocurrency. After the meeting, he posted "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT" again and pinned it to the top, hoping to incite the community. sentiment, but did not express his views on the WLFI project itself; Trump’s 18-year-old son Barron Trump was listed as the “DeFi visionary” of the project, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. is known as the "Web3 Ambassador", and Eric Trump was revealed to be one of the leaders of WLFI.
At the same time, cryptocurrency practitioners are also important participants in WLFI. According to CNBC, people familiar with the matter revealed that in addition to Eric Trump, real estate investor Witkoff is also a decision-maker at WLFI, a new player in the crypto industry. Of course, there are many experienced crypto people. For example, some members of WLFI come from the DeF project Dough Finance, which was hacked in the past few months. The white paper lists the founders of the project, including Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, as the operating directors of World Liberty Financial. , Head of Data and Strategy.
In this regard, the Wall Street Journal also criticized Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro in the report, saying that compared with entrepreneurs with traditional financial or technology backgrounds, their experiences are unusual. The Wall Street Journal mentioned that Chase Herro had a criminal record in the past. When he was young, he was a habitual criminal and was imprisoned (the crime was not mentioned in the article). He called himself a "dirtbag of the internet" and later claimed that he had changed his mind. Reinvent yourself and successfully make a fortune through business dealings.
Herro has a long-standing relationship with Folkman, who founded a company called Date Hotter Girls, which offers educational seminars to help men attract beautiful women so they can date them. Folkman and Herro also collaborated on a series of business ventures, initially in the U.S. Virgin Islands and later in Puerto Rico. Public records show that both men own properties in Puerto Rico, where tax breaks attract a sizable number of cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and Folkman is listed in government databases as one of thousands of residents in Puerto Rico who enjoy tax breaks.
Not only that, according to CCN reports, CoinDesk reports that WLFI operates very similarly to Dough Finance, and a review of a deleted GitHub code repository shows that WLFI appears to have directly copied Dough Finance’s code, at least in its early stages. The white paper also "hints" that WLFI will adopt Dough Finance's code base. Although this information needs to be further confirmed, it still caused some noise in the market because Dough Finance suffered a $1.8 million flash loan attack loss in July this year.
In addition to these two members, according to WLFI’s official announcement, Dolomite co-founder Corey Caplan is also an advisor to WLFI. The platform is a DeFi platform launched in 2022 and positions itself as a money market that provides trading, lending and portfolio management. Platforms and decentralized exchanges (DEX). It was originally launched on Arbitrum One and now exists on several other blockchains. Alexei Dulub, founder of Web3 Antivirus and PixelPlex, also joins the team as an advisor. According to WLFI: “Alexei has been a blockchain pioneer since 2013, building custom L1 and L2 that power today’s Web3 projects.”
In addition, in terms of security, WLFI claims that they have hired top security experts to conduct a "thorough review" of the project code, including smart contract and EVM auditing company BlockSec and blockchain analysis and security company PeckShield. At the same time, WLFI also intends to cooperate with Aave to develop its DeFi project. Its mission is to make cryptocurrencies and the United States "greater" by promoting the large-scale adoption of stablecoins and developing DeFi. The ultimate goal is to promote stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar globally. This strategy aims to maintain the dominance of the U.S. dollar and, in this way, ensure the leadership and influence of the United States on the global financial stage.
Beyond that, the WLFI team has provided few actual details on the project itself, only emphasizing usability. In this regard, Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett posted on the X platform that she got most of the feedback from community listeners (previously Trump conducted X Space), perhaps because no substantive information about the platform and its actual use was disclosed. The results show that the community is disappointed with the Trump family’s DeFi project World Liberty Financial.
Subject to SEC regulation, over 60% of WLFI tokens will be sold
WLFI will launch a governance token, $WLFI, which will be non-transferable and provide no additional economic rights, presumably to avoid violating securities laws. In addition, under the strict regulatory environment of encryption in the United States, $WLFI’s token sales will be regulated by the U.S. SEC. Only certified accredited investors can purchase $WLFI, and token sales will be conducted under the SEC’s “Regulation D” exemption.
According to the U.S. securities laws, the issuance and sale of all securities can be done through two compliance methods. The first is to register securities with the SEC, and the second is to apply for an exemption from registration of securities with the SEC. The former is the traditional equity listing path, that is, IPO, which has high compliance costs and is not suitable for currency issuance projects in the crypto circle. Therefore, for most cryptocurrency projects, the latter registration exemption path is actually feasible. Among them, exemptions can be registered according to Regulation D, Regulation S, Regulation A+ and other regulations.
Simply put, WLFI is taking advantage of the Regulation D exemption to raise funds through qualified investors or small private placements without registering securities with the SEC.
At the same time, according to Decrypt reports, there is no pre-sale of $WLFI tokens, nor venture capital and early buy-in, just like any other DeFi project that you can expect to see, and the token distribution now launched is very fair, with most of the supply The amount will be distributed in an upcoming token sale, with a portion of the net proceeds from this sale going into the project’s multi-signature wallet treasury reserves.
According to the content of the white paper exposed in advance and the team's disclosure during the live broadcast, approximately 62.66% of the $WLFI supply will be distributed in the upcoming token sale, then 17.33% will be reserved as user rewards and to promote community development, and the final remaining 20% will be allocated to the team, consultants and future employees. An undisclosed portion of the $WLFI will be allocated to the WLF Foundation, affiliates of the Trump Organization, and the Witkoff Group. The team also revealed that sales of $WLFI, as well as all purchasers of $WLFI, will be screened by the same KYC standards as US-based cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken.
Although $WLFI has not yet been launched, there are already many related tokens on the market. In this regard, Eric Trump also warned the public to be wary of fake tokens claiming to be Trump projects. The only official project will be announced directly by the official, "Please don't be fooled, please look forward to the emergence of real tokens."
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"DeFi project World Liberty Financial: Trump family platform, more than 60% of governance tokens are sold externally" This article was first published in "Blocker".