Trump Project WLFI aggressively purchased $45 million worth of tokens. Who are the key decision-makers behind it?

Author: Weilin, PANews

Trump's DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) made a significant purchase of crypto assets in December, with total expenditures nearing $45 million, including ETH, cbBTC, LINK, AAVE, ENA, and the latest ONDO.

Since its launch in September, the project has claimed 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 project's practicality and innovation still carry a degree of uncertainty.

Major Crypto Asset Purchases in December, Total Expenditure Nearing $45 Million

According to blockchain data platform Lookonchain, World Liberty Financial has purchased a large amount of crypto assets through a single wallet since November 30, including $30 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) and $10 million of Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC). Other acquired assets include LINK, AAVE, ENA, and the latest purchase of $250,000 worth of Ondo tokens. The specific purchase data is as follows:

• $30 million USDC for 8,105 ETH at a unit price of $3,701;
• $10 million USDC for 103 cbBTC at a unit price of $97,181;
• $2 million USDC for 78,387 LINK at a unit price of $25.5;
• $2 million USDC for 6,137 AAVE at a unit price of $326;
• $500,000 USDC for 509,955 ENA at a unit price of $0.98;
• $250,000 USDC for 134,216 ONDO at a unit price of $1.86.

Additionally, although COW is not listed among World Liberty Financial's assets, recent on-chain token purchases have utilized Cowswap, which is one of the most commonly used DEXs by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

World Liberty Financial launched in September, claiming to be a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for cryptocurrency trading, with former President Trump listed as the "chief crypto advocate," and his 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 namesake token, World Liberty Financial (WLFI). According to the roadmap, the fully diluted valuation of the project is $1.5 billion, with the "initial sale" plan aiming to raise $300 million by selling 20% of the token supply. However, as of December 17, 4.99 billion WLFI tokens have 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 in WLFI, becoming the project's largest investor. No other institutions have publicly announced investments in the project.

WLFI Community Votes to Approve First Proposal, Deploying Aave v3 Lending Instance

Meanwhile, the good news is that on December 13, the governance page of World Liberty Financial showed that the WLFI community voted to approve its first proposal to deploy an Aave v3 lending instance on the Ethereum mainnet.

As of December 16, Aave DAO has a treasury valued at $347 million. Initially, when World Liberty Financial announced its intention to build on the Aave protocol, the Aave community was skeptical. However, in October, the situation changed 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 that manages the Aave protocol.

The proposal suggests deploying an Aave v3 instance based on World Liberty Financial (WLF), focusing on:

• Providing stablecoin liquidity for ETH and WBTC.
• Expanding the user base of the Aave protocol.

The proposal needs to be approved by AaveDAO and the WLF community governance. If 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, establishing brand loyalty and recognition 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 consensus, it will be submitted to the Snapshot phase. 2. If the Snapshot vote passes, it will enter the ARFC phase. 3. Release the standard ARFC and collect feedback from the community and service providers. 4. If the ARFC Snapshot passes, an AIP vote will be released for final confirmation and execution.

WLFI Leadership Team Not Familiar Faces, What Are Their Backgrounds?

Behind Trump's DeFi project are many unfamiliar faces to the crypto community. In addition to 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 particularly unusual background. He has reportedly been involved in several businesses seemingly unrelated to the crypto industry, including cannabis sales and weight loss products, and boasts about luxury cars and private jet travels on social media, but has little reputation in the crypto space. The only crypto project he 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 96% after the promotion. In a speech in 2018, he referred to himself as "the scourge of the internet" and stated that regulators should "kick people like me out."

Additionally, another co-founder, Zak Folkman, who is Chase Herro's business partner, previously ran a service called Date Hotter Girls, where he taught seminars on how to flirt with women, which has a controversial background.

As for Steven Witkoff, he is a friend of Trump and a real estate developer who 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.

Aside from these co-founders with backgrounds less related to crypto, the backgrounds of other specific business segment leaders appear more professional and closer to the crypto industry.

Rich Teo, who serves as the head of stablecoins and payments, is 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 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 on Twitter.

Corey Caplan serves as the head of technical strategy and is a co-founder of Dolomite, 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 including margin trading, lending, and portfolio management.

Bogdan Purnavel serves as the chief developer and was also a developer for Dough Finance, with the online nickname 0xboga. 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 the legal advisor. 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 has a team of advisors composed of venture capitalists, lawyers, and blockchain engineers. Sandy Peng, co-founder of the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain Scroll, and Luke Pearson, a general partner at Polychain Capital, are both advisors to the project.

Currently, World Liberty Financial's large-scale token purchases 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 its own project by drawing attention to these assets, as if these assets perform well, World Liberty Financial might also benefit."

Although to those unfamiliar with cryptocurrency, World Liberty Financial's plans may sound innovative, such startups are actually quite common, with few succeeding. Many of these companies are established merely to sell tokens and make profits, as previously stated by Tarun Chitra, a general partner at Robot Ventures.

Overall, Trump's family DeFi project World Liberty Financial demonstrates its ambitions in the crypto space through large-scale token purchases and collaboration with Aave. Their investment targets have also become a barometer of investor interest. However, the relative unfamiliarity of its leadership team and the uncertainty surrounding the project's practicality and innovation remain. 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 further observation.