Spending 45 million US dollars to buy coins: Who is the manipulator behind Trump's project WLFI?

Original title: "Trump project WLFI buys $45 million in tokens, who are the core decision makers behind it?"

Original author: Weilin, PANews

Trump's DeFi project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) bought a large number of crypto assets in December, with a cumulative expenditure of nearly $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, from the current situation, the leadership team is mostly new faces, and there is still some uncertainty about the practicality and innovation of the project.

Massive purchases of crypto assets in December, total spending close to $45 million

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

Use $30 million USDC to purchase 8,105 ETH at a unit price of $3,701;

Use $10 million USDC to purchase 103 cbBTC at a unit price of $97,181;

Use $2 million USDC to purchase 78,387 LINK at a unit price of $25.5;

Use $2 million USDC to purchase 6,137 AAVE at a unit price of $326;

Use $500,000 USDC to purchase 509,955 ENA at a unit price of $0.98;

Use $250,000 USDC to purchase 134,216 ONDO, priced at $1.86 per unit.

In addition, although COW is not on the list of World Liberty Financial's assets, Cowswap has been used in recent on-chain token purchases, which is also one of the most commonly used DEXs by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Launched in September, World Liberty Financial claims to be a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for cryptocurrency trading, and lists President-elect Trump as the "chief crypto advocate", while Trump's sons Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump serve as "ambassadors." Companies associated with the family are entitled to 75% of the net income.

The project has had a dismal performance in selling its eponymous token, World Liberty Financial (WLFI). According to the roadmap, $1.5 billion is the fully diluted valuation of the project, and WLFI's "first sale" plans to raise $300 million and sell 20% of the token supply. But as of December 17, 4.99 billion WLFIs have been sold, totaling $74.85 million at a unit price of $0.015, less than a quarter of the $300 million target. It is worth mentioning that Justin Sun disclosed that he invested $30 million in WLFI, becoming the largest investor in the project. Apart from this, no institution has announced investment in the project.

WLFI community voted to pass the first proposal to deploy a lending instance based on Aave v3

At the same time, the good news is that on December 13, the World Liberty Financial governance page showed that the WLFI community voted to pass the first proposal to deploy a lending instance based on Aave v3 on the Ethereum mainnet.

As of December 16, Aave DAO has a treasury worth $347 million. Initially, when World Liberty Financial announced that it would be building on the Aave protocol, the Aave community was skeptical. However, this changed in October when 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 proposes deploying an Aave v3 instance based on World Liberty Financial (WLF), with highlights including:

· Provide stablecoin liquidity for ETH and WBTC.

· Expand the user base of the Aave protocol.

The proposal needs to be approved by the AaveDAO and WLF community governance. If the proposal is approved, users will be able to deposit USDC and USDT stablecoins on the protocol, as well as ETH and wBTC. These assets can be used as collateral to borrow other assets on Aave.

The proposal mentions that the benefits to Aave are to bring a large number of new users and liquidity to Aave, build brand loyalty and awareness among new DeFi users, and consolidate 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 stage. 2. If the Snapshot vote passes, it will enter the ARFC stage. 3. Release the standard ARFC and collect feedback from the community and service providers. 4. If the ARFC Snapshot passes, release the AIP vote for final confirmation and execution.

The WLFI leadership team is not a familiar face, what is their origin?

There are many new faces behind Trump's DeFi project that are not well known in the crypto circle. 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 special background. According to reports, he has been engaged in a number of businesses that seem to be unrelated to the crypto industry, including marijuana sales and weight loss products, and has shown off luxury cars and private jet travel on social media, but has little reputation in the crypto circle. The only crypto project he has publicly been involved in, Dough Finance, has attracted only a few million dollars and suffered a serious hack. A token he promoted on influencer Logan Paul's podcast plummeted 96% after the promotion. In a 2018 speech, he called himself "the scum of the Internet" and said regulators should "kick people like me out."

In addition, another co-founder, Chase Herro's business partner Zak Folkman, once ran a service called Date Hotter Girls, where he taught lectures on how to pick up women, with a more controversial background.

As for Steven Witkoff, he is a familiar friend of Trump and a real estate developer. He has donated $2 million to Trump's campaign. After Trump won the election, he appointed him as a special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff's sons Alex and Zach are listed as co-founders of World Liberty Finanical.

In addition to these co-founders who are far from the crypto market, the backgrounds of the heads of other specific business sectors appear to be more professional and closer to the crypto industry.

For example, Rich Teo, who serves as the head of stablecoins and payments, is also an OG in the crypto field. He co-founded the exchange itBit in 2012, and then co-founded the stablecoin company Paxos. He is currently the CEO of Paxos Asia. In addition, Rich is also an advisor to the AI-driven SocialFi project RepubliK, and has retweeted many tweets of the project on Twitter.

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

Bogdan Purnavel serves as the lead developer. He is also a developer at Dough Finance and his online nickname is 0xboga. The head of blockchain at 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 legal counsel. Alex Golubitsky is an international tax attorney whose career spans tax law, securities law, entity formation, contract drafting, and litigation. He is a partner at MetaLeX Pro, LLP and general counsel at Brisa Max Holdings VI, LLC.

In addition, World Liberty Financial has an advisory team of venture capitalists, lawyers, and blockchain engineers. Sandy Peng, co-founder of Ethereum's second-layer blockchain Scroll, and Luke Pearson, general partner of Polychain Capital, are among the advisors to the project.

At present, World Liberty Financial's large-scale token purchase has caused different evaluations from the outside world.

Nansen Research Analyst Nicolai Søndergaard told Bloomberg that World Liberty Financial's token purchase may be "to gain more trust or promote the development of its own projects by attracting attention to these assets, because if these assets perform well, World Liberty Financial may also benefit."

Although World Liberty Financial's plan may sound innovative to those who are not familiar with cryptocurrencies, startups like this are actually common, but few succeed. Many such companies are established just to sell tokens and make a profit, Tarun Chitra, general partner of Robot Ventures, previously told the outside world.

In general, the Trump family's DeFi project World Liberty Financial has demonstrated its ambition in the crypto field through large-scale coin purchases and cooperation with Aave. Their investment targets are screened and have become a weather vane for investors. However, its leadership team is relatively unfamiliar, and there is still uncertainty about the practicality and innovation of the project. Despite this, as a project initiated by the family of the "crypto president" of the United States, it will still attract widespread attention from the market, and the follow-up situation deserves further attention.

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