World Liberty Financial, the DeFi protocol backed by the Trump family, proposed on Friday making the project’s WLFI token tradable in a move it says will open the door for broader community participation.
The proposal, posted to the project’s governance forum, will solicit community input and formally initiate the tradability of WLFI.
“With strong demand from community members and partners, many community members have said that the timing is right to make WLFI tradable,” the proposal said.
Insiders kept back
If it passes a vote among WLFI holders, it will let those who bought the token during the project’s token sale cash out. And it will let those who waited buy in.
Moreover, tokens held by founders, the team, and advisors will also be kept back, and will be subject to a longer unlock schedule than those sold to early supporters.
The timing and any eligibility requirements for unlocking the tokens belonging to insiders will also be determined in a subsequent vote.
Those insiders include Donald Trump and his three sons Eric, Donald Jr, and Barron, as well as long-time Trump ally Steven Witkoff and his sons Zach and Alex, among others.
$550 million
Between October and March, World Liberty Financial sold 35 billion WLFI tokens to early investors for a combined $550 million — making it one of the crypto projects that raised the most money in the first half of 2025.
The sale was open to the public, as long as buyers agreed to undergo know-your-customer checks.
Many tokens were bought by high-rolling crypto whales, such as Tron founder Justin Sun, who scooped up a total of $75 million worth of WLFI.
World Liberty Financial is a purported DeFi protocol, although many of its features haven’t launched yet.
In April, it launched a stablecoin called USD1, tradable on yhe Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Tron blockchains.
There are currently $2.2 billion worth of USD1 in circulation, making it the seventh biggest stablecoin on the market, per DefiLlama data.
World Liberty Financial says making the WLFI token tradable will transition the WLFI ecosystem from closed to open participation, helping align long-term token incentives with protocol adoption and success.
The move will also finally test the token on the open market, where trader demand will set its value.
If the vote to make WLFI tradable passes it won’t unlock all tokens immediately, however.
Only a portion of those sold to early investors will be made tradable. The remainder of the tokens will be subject to a second vote by the community to determine the unlock and release schedule, the proposal said.
On January 17, just three days before Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States, he launched a memecoin.
Two days later, Melania Trump also launched her own memecoin.
The Trump memecoin has fallen 88% from its all-time high, while Melania’s token is down 98%.
The different Trump-linked projects have drawn the ire of Democrats, who have decried them as “open corruption” as it has coincided with a major easing of the government’s crypto policing, including the Securities and Exchange Commission halting its fraud case against Sun.
The White House refuted the allegations.
