Trump to unveil World Liberty Financial today. Here’s everything to know about the DeFi project

Donald Trump is set to formally announce his DeFi project, World Liberty Financial, on Monday.

Like most DeFi projects, World Liberty’s got a lofty goal — to “make crypto and America great by driving the mass adoption of stablecoins and decentralised finance.”

If successful, it will also almost certainly further enrich its developers and the Trump family through possible plans to raise a whopping $537 million from token sales.

But World Liberty has already attracted negative attention from senior Democrats such as Maxine Waters, who told Congress bad actors have used the buzz around the project to scam potential users.

Even Trump’s backers are sceptical.

Castle Island Ventures founding partner Nic Carter, a vocal Trump supporter, called the project an “unnecessary distraction,” and a potential embarrassment for the former president.

It’s a family project

It was Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr, who first teased World Liberty at the beginning of August.

Since then, Trump himself has promoted the project on social media. It was Trump, too, who officially announced the launch date for World Liberty on X last week.

An adviser to World Liberty, pseudonymously named Ogle, confirmed to DL News that Eric, Donald Jr, and Barron are all involved in World Liberty.

Barron Trump, 18, who recently enrolled at New York University, is listed as World Liberty’s “DeFi visionary,” per the project’s documentation, CoinDesk reported.

His role isn’t clear. Barron doesn’t appear to have any prior involvement in DeFi.

WLFI token

DeFi projects often come with governance tokens that are also usually tradable on the market. World Liberty will also introduce a token, the project’s documentation said, though it claims the token won’t be tradable, meaning it won’t have a market value.

But code tests reveal the token could be made tradable in the future.

It’s also not clear yet what the distribution of the token will look like. Though Trump family members promote World Liberty, none are legally involved, per a disclaimer in the project’s documentation, reported by CoinDesk.

The tests showed plans for World Liberty to sell 30% of its WLFI token at a $1.8 billion valuation.

If successful, the sale would value the remaining 70% of tokens, earmarked for the Trump family and the project’s developers and advisers, at almost $1.3 billion.

World Liberty hasn’t confirmed if the parameters used in these tests will remain the same in the final version of its token structure. A spokesperson for the project declined to comment.

The split of tokens between World Liberty’s team, advisers, and the Trump family isn’t known, either.

Who’s involved

World Liberty has signed on several people to develop and advise the project.

Chase Herro and Zach Folkman

The project’s central figure is the 39-year-old Chase Herro.

Herro, along with his business partner Zach Folkman, are listed in documentation as World Liberty’s head of operations and its data and strategies lead respectively, Ogle confirmed.

Herro is no stranger to controversy. A token he promoted on influencer Logan Paul’s podcast dropped 96% afterward.

Herro runs a members-only trading group, charging members $149 a month for his advice, according to Bloomberg.

“If you do this right, who fucking cares if it goes to zero?” he said in a YouTube video promoting the group.

Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer, introduced Herro to the Trumps, according to one of the people involved with the project who spoke with Bloomberg.

Herro and Folkman had both worked on DeFi project Dough Finance, a lending protocol that shares similarities with World Liberty, CoinDesk reported.

Dough Finance was hacked in July, costing users some $2.1 million.

Ogle

Ogle is a pseudonymous security expert and co-founder of the Glue blockchain who recently signed on as an adviser to World Liberty.

He told DL News that the Trumps see the new project “as a way of strengthening the US economic system.”

Ogle said he knows Herro and Folkman from his New York business days.

However he was tight-lipped, describing the token compensation for his role as “minimal,” and declining to elaborate.

“If the project turns into a $50 billion fully-diluted valuation token, it won’t change my life meaningfully in any way,” he told DL News.

Ogle also said he’s still in the dark about many of the details of World Liberty, including the specifics of the Trump family’s involvement, and said that official documentation hadn’t been completed yet.

Corey Caplan

Joining Herro, Folkman and Ogle is Corey Caplan, co-founder of DeFi money market Dolomite.

Ogle said he first met Caplan when the Dolomite co-founder pitched a group of New York crypto investors in 2018.

Ogle said Caplan is one of a few people he would trust with his private keys — the password-like codes that grant access to crypto wallets.

Sandy Peng

Sandy Peng, co-founder of Ethereum layer 2 blockchain Scroll, is the latest to sign on to World Liberty as an adviser.

How Peng became involved isn’t known. She’s well-known in the edgy fringe of DeFi populated by fans of the controversial NFT collection Milady Maker.

Influential Trump supporters in DeFi, such as crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro, have sported Milady NFTs as profile pictures on social media.

Aave

World Liberty isn’t building a new DeFi protocol from scratch. It’s piggybacking off Aave, the top DeFi lending protocol with $11 billion in deposits.

This kind of DeFi protocol is fairly common — building on top of Aave doesn’t mean there is any explicit cooperation.

Ogle declined to comment on Aave link, citing a non-disclosure agreement.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.