- Family and close friends helm Donald Trump’s DeFi project.
- World Liberty started its token sale Tuesday.
- Venture triggers controversy and doubt.
Donald Trump’s embrace of crypto is complete.
A onetime crypto critic, the former president and current Republican presidential candidate has done more than endorse the industry’s goals in Washington, DC.
Now, he and his sons have launched World Liberty Financial, a would-be decentralised finance project for lending dollar-pegged stablecoins.
As with many of Trump’s business endeavours, World Liberty lands in a swirl of doubt and promises. The venture boasts a motley crew of figures, some well known in crypto circles, others not so much.
So, who’s riding shotgun in Trump’s odd DeFi wagon?
Donald Junior, Eric & Barron Trump
World Liberty’s “gold paper” lists Trump and his three sons — Donald Junior, Eric, and Barron — as members of the project’s support team.
The former president is listed as chief crypto advocate while his sons are so-called web3 ambassadors. An earlier draft of the gold paper listed 18-year-old Barron as “DeFi visionary.”
Trump’s youngest son was once linked to a family-themed memecoin called DJT. Martin Shkreli, the convicted investment manager and social media influencer, alleged that he and Barron created DJT, a Solana-based memecoin.
Barron’s link to the project was never established and he did not comment publicly on the matter. In August, unidentified players “rugged,” or withdrew, most of the DJT’s token’s liquidity, leaving investors with worthless assets.
Eric Trump, executive vice president and trustee of the Trump Organisation, is one of the project’s leading promoters along with brother Donald Trump Jr.
The siblings first began teasing the project on social media posts in August.
Eric is no stranger to his father’s history of blurring the lines between family affairs and finance. He signed the reimbursement cheques to former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen who handled the infamous Stormy Daniels hush money payments.
In June, a New York state jury convicted Donald Trump for unlawfully covering up those payments as business expenses.
As for the Trump sons’ practical experience in crypto, there’s very little. Still, the former president said they changed his mind about the industry’s potential.
Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman/Dough Finance
World Liberty is a fork of a defunct DeFi project called Dough Finance, and it will be deployed on DeFi’s biggest lending protocol, Aave.
Forks aren’t unusual in DeFi but Dough Finance was exploited for $2.1 million this summer. The attack occurred after developers failed to code a way for the smart contract to verify the actions of users trying to connect to another protocol.
Several Dough Finance developers are behind World Liberty including Chase Herro, aka “Hero,” and his frequent collaborator Zachary Folkman, as well as blockchain developer Bogdan Purnavel who goes by the online moniker 0xboga.
Folkman and Herro are listed as co-founders alongside New York real estate magnate Steven Witkoff.
Herro, a self-styled “dirtbag of the internet,” has a colourful backstory littered with several failed internet ventures, including a crypto trading platform called Pacer Capital. According to Bloomberg News, he said he made a fortune in internet advertising and dealt marijuana as a young man.
The Witkoff family
Steven Witkoff is a longtime friend of Donald Trump’s and has donated $2 million to his campaigns. Witkoff’s sons, Alex and Zach, are listed as co-founders of World Liberty.
Witkoff described Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman as “exceptionally bright people” in an X Spaces livestream to promote the project last month. He also said that World Liberty had been in development for “close to nine months.”
In addition, World Liberty counts a retinue of advisers drawn from venture capitalists, lawyers, and blockchain engineers.
Sandy Peng, co-founder of Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Scroll, is among the project’s advisers as is Polychain Capital general partner Luke Pearson.
World Liberty began its token sale to accredited investors on Tuesday.
Onchain data currently shows more than 9,000 Ethereum wallet addresses are holders of the WLFI token.
Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.
