WLFI's 4-year lock proposal, is this really sane?

Just now, the Trump family's World Liberty Financial (WLFI) was discussed, and they announced an unusually long token unlock schedule, which makes me tilt my head in disbelief when I see it.

To roughly organize the background, here’s what happened: WLFI started its first round of pre-sale in October last year, selling 20 billion tokens at $0.015 each. Then, in March 2025, the second round sold 5 billion tokens at $0.05 each. Additionally, 8.89B tokens were sold to institutional investors at $0.10 each. In total, they pre-sold 33.89B tokens.

At the time of listing last September, the price jumped over $0.45, but then gradually declined. Currently, it’s trading around $0.07. Participants in the first round (bought at $0.015) could have made a profit if they sold immediately after listing, but many from the second round (bought at $0.05) are still in the red.

Now, here’s the main point. The token unlock rules WLFI announced are pretty crazy. The locked tokens from pre-sale participants will be locked for two years, then gradually released over the next two years. In other words, it takes four years for full unlock. The founders and team will burn 10% permanently, but the remaining 90% will be locked for 2 years and then released over 3 years. Total of 5 years.

Many users who invested in Trump were probably attracted by President Trump’s name recognition, but by the time four years pass, Trump’s term will be over. It’s even uncertain whether he will remember this project at that point.

Another concern is that WLFI claims to uphold the “spirit of decentralization,” yet explicitly states that tokens held by holders who do not agree to the proposal will remain locked indefinitely. In other words, “if you don’t agree, you’re locked forever,” as a form of intimidation.

Because of this, the comment section on the forum looks suspicious. It’s full of bot-like comments starting with “YES” in a template format. Genuine user comments are quite angry, with some saying “I want to report this to the police.”

What is WLFI’s true intention? Is the 10% burn truly sincere, or just a show to calm community sentiment? Personally, I think the value of that 10% in a few years is questionable. The team’s real goal might be to keep everything locked. Because the current token distribution aligns with their maximum profit. On the surface, they pretend not to get their own tokens, but behind the scenes, there must be hidden allocations. The token unlock schedule itself might be a mechanism to hide their true intent.

Well, this is just speculation, of course.