Deep digging into the WLF supported by the Trump family: Who is the suspected OEM behind the scenes

Author: 0xjs@Jinse Finance

Since the former US President Trump fully turned to encryption, it has been common to see industry insiders who support Trump's remarks on encryption.

However, since September 2024, Trump has personally supported the Decentralized Finance project World Liberty Financial. He even occasionally promotes it on his official account, which has nearly 100 million followers, leaving industry insiders amazed.

Not only that, well-known institutions and projects in the encryption industry are increasingly involved, such as Luke Pearson of Polychain Capital, Sandy Peng of Scroll, Ryan Fang of Tomo Wallet, and Rich Teo of Paxos, all of whom have become advisors or team members of World Liberty Financial.

On the evening of October 15, 2024, World Liberty Financial officially started its public sale, and World Liberty Financial finally revealed itself.

The Golden Finance reporter has thoroughly investigated World Liberty Financial and summarized everything you need to know about World Liberty Financial.

What is World Liberty Financial?

According to the official information from World Liberty Financial, World Liberty Financial describes itself as follows: Inspired by Trump, it promotes the widespread adoption of stablecoins and Decentralized Finance, especially US dollar stablecoins, to ensure the dominance of the US dollar. A key part of World Liberty Financial is to leverage the global influence and popularity of the Trump brand to bring as many Web2 users as possible into the Web3 world.

Therefore, World Liberty Financial will be a DeFi platform where users can borrow and lend Crypto Assets, create liquidity pools, and trade with stablecoins.

According to the proposal from World Liberty Financial on the Aave governance forum, World Liberty Financial requests a temperature check on the motion to deploy Aave V3 instances, which will allow four cryptocurrencies, USDC, USDT, ETH, and WBTC, to be used as collateral for borrowing. World Liberty Financial will allocate 7% of its token supply to the Aave DAO (worth $10.5 million) for governance and liquidity provision, as well as 20% of the fees generated by its platform.

According to publicly available information, the first phase of World Liberty Financial is to launch a version of Aave on the Scroll network of the ETH Layer 2, allowing users to borrow and lend Tokens.

World Liberty Financial is closely tied to the Trump family.

When discussing World Liberty Financial in the outside world, it is generally prefixed as 'Trump family-supported' World Liberty Financial.

The reason for this is that World Liberty Financial is highly tied to the Trump family.

Trump has repeatedly posted on social media to promote World Liberty Financial and has claimed to be the "Chief Crypto Advocate" of the World Liberty Financial project.

Donald Trump's two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric Donald, jointly serve as "Web 3 Envoys" for World Liberty Financial, while their 18-year-old son, Barron Trump, is a "Decentralized Finance visionary" for World Liberty Financial.

Despite the close ties between World Liberty Financial and the Trump family, from various indications, World Liberty Financial looks more like an OEM product of the Trump family. The Trump family produces the brand and earns the income, while unknown operators use the reputation of the Trump family to launch products.

For the Trump family, this seems to be a common business practice. For example, many Trump hotels or buildings around the world named after Trump are licensed and OEM collaborations with Trump. In addition to real estate, Trump continues to license his naming rights to other fields such as perfume, steak, and mineral water. Trump's daughter Ivanka is also a frequent OEM customer.

Suspected OEM World Liberty Financial

According to the World Liberty Financial White Paper, DT Marks DEFI LLC agrees to use its best efforts to require the owners and principals of DT Marks DEFI LLC, including Donald Trump, to occasionally promote WLF and the World Liberty Financial protocol, while granting WLF and its related entities the right and license to use the name and likeness of the owners of DT Marks DEFI for promotion.

And the fact is that Trump's photo appears on 11 pages of the World Liberty Financial 13-page White Paper, and World Liberty Financial has also received an endorsement from the Trump family.

World Liberty Financial White Paper Cover

In return, World Liberty Financial agrees that DT Marks DEFI LLC will receive 22.5 billion WLFI tokens and have the right to receive 75% of the net income of the protocol, which is determined after deducting the agreed operating expenses and initial national treasury reserves. The service protocol may be terminated by DT Marks DEFI LLC under certain conditions for "justifiable reasons," or terminated due to the non-renewal of the initial 5-year period.

DT Marks DEFI LLC is a Delaware limited liability company (one of which is owned by Trump), whose affiliated entities have received or may receive compensation for providing services to World Liberty Financial and its affiliates. These services are provided under a service protocol with Axiom Management Group, LLC ("AMG"), a Puerto Rican limited liability company owned entirely by Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman. World Liberty Financial was established under the guidance of AMG. AMG is entitled to receive 7.5 billion WLFI tokens and 25% of net revenue from the protocol, but agrees to allocate 50% of them to WC Digital Fi LLC, an affiliate of Steve Witkoff and some of his family members.

Take another look at the World Liberty Financial team members.

Co-founders Chase Herro and Zak Folkman of World Liberty Financial have AMG and can receive half of the 7.5 billion WLFITokens and 25% of the net income from the World Liberty Financial protocol, while the other half of the Token and protocol income goes to the other co-founders, Steven Witkoff's family (co-founders Steven Witkoff, Zach Witkoff, Alex Witkoff).

Behind the Scenes of World Liberty Financial Operator

Although Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, co-founders of World Liberty Financial, have worked in the encryption industry, they are not well-known in the encryption world.

According to CoinDesk, Chase Herro and Zak Folkman previously developed the Decentralized Finance product Dough Finance, but failed to gain followers and were attacked by hackers in the summer of 2024, losing $2 million. Chase Herro and Zak Folkman also co-founded the creator platform Subify, which claims to be an uncensored competitor of well-known creator platforms Patreon and OnlyFans. Folkman had previously registered a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC and posted content on YouTube on how to approach women.

The blockchain leader of World Liberty Financial is Octavian Lojnita. According to Octavian Lojnita's online resume, he is from Romania and is a full-stack developer. Octavian Lojnita previously worked at Dough Finance. The anonymous front-end developer Boga at World Liberty Financial is listed as the author in the Source Code of Dough Finance (under 0xboga).

Coindesk also reported that World Liberty Financial had posted a code repository on GitHub, which was later deleted. Review of its code repository indicates that World Liberty Financial (at least in the early stages) appears to have directly copied code from Dough Finance.

However, on September 4, 2024, X released a post stating that World Liberty Financial did not want to take any risks, and its code has been thoroughly reviewed by auditing firms such as BlockSec, Fuzzland, PeckShield, Zokyo, etc.

Although World Liberty Financial has already started selling governance Token WLFI to the public on its official website, World Liberty Financial protocol and applications have not yet been launched. It is currently uncertain whether World Liberty Financial's subsequent versions will include Dough Finance's early code or vulnerabilities.

World Liberty Financial's other three co-founders include the Steven Witkoff family. According to public information, Steven Witkoff is a well-known real estate developer and an old friend of Trump.

WLFI Token Information

WLFI Token Price: 0.015 US dollars

Total Public Sale: 200 billion tokens (equivalent to 3 billion US dollars)

Sold: As of the time of writing, only 723 million coins (approximately 10 million USD) have been sold, with 19.2 billion coins still available for sale

Token Total: 100 billion

FDV: $1.5 billion

Contract Address: 0xda5e1988097297dcdc1f90d4dfe7909e847cbef6

WLFI Token Allocation:

• 35% Token Sale: A significant proportion of WLFI Tokens will be distributed to eligible participants through Token Sale to encourage their widespread participation in the decision-making and rise of the WLF protocol.
• 32.5% Community rise and incentives: This part will be reserved for expanding the governance participation of the WLF community and supporting the construction of the WLF protocol.
• 30% Initial Supporter Allocation: This portion of the Token is allocated to initial supporters (22.5 billion + 7.5 billion, which has already been allocated to the Trump and World Liberty Financial teams).
• 2.5% Team and Advisors: This portion of the Tokens will be used to reward the core team, advisors, service providers, and individuals who contribute to the development of WLF protocol.

**World Liberty FinancialTokenWLFI also has a special feature: **Token status is non-transferable and indefinitely locked in Wallet or Smart Contract. Users should consider the purchase of WLFIToken as the purchase of other non-refundable goods and services.

World Liberty Financial claims that if it wants to unlock the transferability of WLFI through the protocol governance process in the future, such unlocking will only be allowed if it is determined not to violate applicable laws, and it must be more than 12 months after the completion of the Token sale. WLFI holders should assume that the Token is not transferable indefinitely. World Liberty Financial also has no plans to create a Secondary Market for WLFI Token.

The reason why WLFI Token is non-transferable may be to avoid regulation. This is intended to make WLFI appear less like a security in the eyes of regulators, making it difficult to buy and sell the asset like other encryptionTokens.

In addition to Token not being transferred, World Liberty Financial's trader is skillful and has taken multiple actions in advance to avoid supervision by the US law enforcement agencies.

How does WLFI token avoid US regulation

The first requirement is for investors. Given Trump's enormous influence in the United States, World Liberty Financial is targeting Americans first. World Liberty Financial requires American investors who participate in the investment to be 'accredited investors' as defined by Regulation D and undergo KYC procedures. Overseas investors are also required to undergo KYC and provide and sell Tokens in a manner that complies with the safe harbor conditions set forth in Section 506(c) of the Securities Act.

Secondly, in terms of Token utility. According to the World Liberty Financial website, World Liberty Financial has made special arrangements for the utility of its WLFIToken, requiring WLFIToken to:

For governance purposes only. The only purpose of holding WLFI is for governance, not for any investment. As a Tokenholder, you will only have the right to propose, vote, and influence decisions regarding World Liberty Financial protocol's future, including marketing plans, future features, etc.

No Economic Rights. The Token does not grant any express or implied rights, except the right to use the Token as a means of participating in the governance of the WLF protocol through the WLF governance platform. WLF Token does not represent or grant any ownership or shares, stocks or guarantees or equivalent rights, or any entitlement to any distribution, income sharing, additional Tokens, intellectual property or any other form of participation or rights related to the WLF protocol and/or the company and its affiliates.

Non-transferable. All WLFI tokens are non-transferable and indefinitely locked in a Wallet or Smart Contract. Users should consider the purchase of WLFIToken as the purchase of other non-refundable goods and services and accept the risks. If in the future, the transferability of WLFI is desired to be unlocked through the protocol governance process, such unlocking will only be allowed if it is determined not to violate applicable laws and must occur at least 12 months after the completion of the token sale. WLFI token holders should assume that the tokens are non-transferable indefinitely. Due to the non-transferability of the tokens, World Liberty Financial protocol has not taken any action and has no plans to create a Secondary Market for the tokens.

World Liberty Financial also strictly distinguishes WLFI Token, WLF governance platform, and WLF protocol. WLFIToken does not provide any economic or other rights related to WLF protocol or any other aspect. Therefore, it has no right to obtain any fees generated by WLF protocol or earned by the company.

World Liberty Financial hereby declares that WLFIToken is not intended to be Digital Money, securities, derivatives, transferable encryption assets, or any other type of financial instrument. Tokens cannot be transferred or sold in exchange for money or other assets (including encryption assets), nor can they be used to purchase goods or services from any party.

Conclusion

There are signs that World Liberty Financial is like a DeFi product under the Trump family OEM.

The true trading team behind World Liberty Financial also has a "dark" history, and the WLFI token is in a completely locked state with no Secondary Market and no Liquidity, which has resulted in slow progress in the public sale of WLFI tokens, with only 10 million dollars sold. Far from matching the momentum of Trump.

But this does not deny the possibility of World Liberty Financial's future success. After all, the U.S. will hold a general election in three weeks, and there is a high probability that Trump will once again take office in the White House.

Based on Trump's attitude towards encryption, the interests of WLF, and the appeal to the American and global people, the global population of encryption is likely to rise to one billion in the next four years, based on the current level.

With this huge traffic and Trump's endorsement, OEMs may also succeed. Just like Trump selling naming rights to other OEM products.