What investment trends do the Trump family crypto projects and their on-chain assets reveal?

Author | Huohuo

Produced by | Vernacular Blockchain

Trump's victory in the US presidential election pushed Bitcoin to break through the $100,000 mark, accelerating the process of this bull market. Not only Bitcoin, but projects related to the Trump team are also taking off.

Recently, World Liberty Financial (hereinafter referred to as WLFI), which has close ties with the Trump family, has frequently purchased ETH, LINK, AAVE, ENA, etc., triggering a wave of follow-up in the market and becoming a benchmark that cannot be ignored in the crypto investment market.

So, what is WLFI, and what actions may it take to affect the market in the future?

01. What is WLFI?

WLFI is a DeFi project supported by Trump and his family (including eldest son Donald Trump Jr., third son Eric Trump, and youngest son Barron Trump). It was launched in September 2023. The Aave V3 platform on the Ethereum mainnet is officially launched.

WLFI is essentially a DeFi platform that allows users to borrow, lend, and invest in cryptocurrencies. The founders’ vision is to build it as a tool to achieve financial independence, allowing users to conduct private peer-to-peer transactions without relying on traditional financial intermediaries, thereby driving the development of decentralized finance globally, especially for those with traditional banking services Not enough people, the Trump family once called it “the future of crypto DeFi.”

WLFI is the governance token of World Liberty Financial. Each token grants its holder one vote in community proposals on the governance platform. However, its initial distribution plan has undergone adjustments, from more than half of the previous allocation to sales. Community and creator rewards come up, reflecting community incentives and changes in the share of initial supporters.

Unlike other governance tokens such as UNI and MKR, WLFI does not provide economic rights, that is, it is not transferable after redemption, which means that users cannot trade/exchange/sell WLFI after holding the token. While this may change through governance proposals in the future, for now it appears that the token will not be tradable for an extended period of time.

Possibly due to its non-transferability and inability to provide short-term profit opportunities for cryptocurrency investors, WLFI has had low liquidity since its launch on October 15.

It is also worth noting that WLFI is only available to users outside the United States and is not registered with any financial regulatory agency. This means that U.S. residents cannot participate in trading these Tokens, which may be considered to avoid the supervision of U.S. law enforcement agencies.

Considering its promotion method, to put it more bluntly, WLFI is a project under the influence of Trump that seeks to promote the use of U.S. dollar stablecoins and DeFi applications and aims to strengthen the status of the U.S. dollar in the DeFi field.

Therefore, we have to explore how the Trump family supports this project.

1) Team members situation

According to WLFI official information, there is a paragraph describing itself as follows: Inspired by Trump, it promotes the large-scale adoption of stablecoins and DeFi, especially US dollar stablecoins, thereby ensuring the dominance of the US dollar.

Donald Trump himself serves as the project's "chief cryptocurrency advocate," while his sons Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Barron Trump serve as Web3 ambassadors, helping to promote The platform does attract mainstream users.

In this context, and according to the content of the white paper, DT Marks DEFI LLC (a Trump-owned company) agreed to promote WLFI and granted it the right to use the names and likenesses of Trump family members for promotional purposes. In return, WLFI pays Tokens to DT Marks DEFI LLC and shares a portion of the protocol’s net revenue (approximately 75%).

But the Trump family has legally bypassed all ties to WLFI. Although WLFI claims to be “the only DeFi platform inspired by Trump,” the positions of advocate and ambassador of the Trump family are not any real positions involved in management, and there is a small text at the bottom of the official website:

Neither Donald J. Trump nor any member of his family, nor any director, officer or employee of the Trump Organization, DT Marks DEFI LLC or their respective affiliates, is an officer, director or director of WLFI or their affiliates , founder or employee. …World Liberty Financial and its WLFI Token are not political in nature and are not part of any political campaign.

Therefore, some critics believe that WLFI is deeply tied to the Trump family and is an OEM product of the Trump family. Unknown traders use the reputation of the Trump family to launch products, and the Trump family sells the brand and obtains profits. Because this kind of business operation is commonplace for the Trump family. For example, many of the Trump hotels or buildings named after Trump around the world are cooperation with Trump in the form of licensing and OEM.

In general, although various propaganda says that WLFI and the Trump family are inextricably linked, there is actually no legal connection. This may be one of the reasons why everyone is not very convinced of WLFI.

In addition to the strong support of the Trump family, the WLFI team is composed of experienced encryption practitioners.

According to the official website, WLFI has a total of five founders, among whom Chase Herro and Zak Folkman’s industry resumes are not very impressive. According to CoinDesk, they once launched a tepid DeFi product, Dough Finance, which was hacked in the summer of 2024 and lost $2 million. In addition, WLFI's blockchain leader Octavian Lojnita and an anonymous developer are also from the former company Dough Finance. Coindesk’s report also showed that a review showed that in the early stages, the code base posted on WLFI directly copied Dough Finance’s code, which was later deleted.

However, WLFI stated that they have had their code reviewed by multiple auditing companies (such as BlockSec, Fuzzland, PeckShield, Zokyo, etc.) to ensure security.

In addition to Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, the other three co-founders of WLFI are the Steven Witkoff family (founders Steven Witkoff, Zach Witkoff, Alex Witkoff). Steven Witkoff is a well-known real estate developer in the United States and a friend of Trump. .

In addition, WLFI also has a team of consultants consisting of venture capitalists, lawyers and blockchain engineers. Among these people are Sandy Peng, co-founder of Scroll, an Ethereum second-layer blockchain, and Luke Pearson, general partner of Polychain Capital.

It can be seen that these advisors have specific technical expertise and market experience, which can help WLFI achieve its long-term goals, especially in promoting USD stablecoins and expanding DeFi applications.

2) Recent development

Although the entire altcoin market has begun to recover, driven by Bitcoin, WLFI's sales are still not optimistic, with only about a quarter sold since its launch.

However, there are two things worth noting. First, at the end of November, Tron founder Justin Sun spent $30 million to allocate WLFI Token to express his support for the project, becoming the largest public investor in the project at present. Then in November On the 26th, Justin Sun was appointed as a consultant to WLFI.

Following the announcement of Justin Sun as an advisory ambassador, on December 18, WLFI announced a cooperation with Ethena Labs. The two parties are seeking long-term cooperation, and the starting plan is to start with Ethena's revenue token sUSDe.

In addition, what attracts the most attention is the various altcoins exchanged by WLFI. Every time it is sold, it can directly trigger a wave of trading boom.

02. On-chain activities of the WLFI project

According to Spot On Chain monitoring, WLFI has reserved a variety of mainstream and emerging crypto assets through a main wallet address since November 2024, especially in December, with cumulative expenditures of nearly $45 million, including ETH, cbBTC, LINK, The total holding value of AAVE, ENA and the latest ONDO has exceeded US$84.8 million.

 Source: https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/entity/worldlibertyfi

According to incomplete statistics, the crypto assets it reserves include:

1) ETH

As the world's second largest cryptocurrency platform, Ethereum's status and influence in the industry go without saying much.

WLFI has purchased ETH many times and has spent the most on ETH. It was previously reported that it spent US$30 million to reserve 8,105 ETH, with a unit price of approximately US$3,700. The most recent operation was on December 20 through Cow Protocol for 250 722.213 ETH were acquired for US$10,000. After this transaction, WLFI’s total ETH holdings reached 16,400 ETH.

2)cbBTC

cbBTC (Coinbase Wrapped Bitcoin) is an ERC-20 Token launched by Coinbase, aiming to introduce the value of Bitcoin (BTC) into blockchain networks such as Ethereum. WLFI spent US$10 million to exchange approximately 103 cbBTC, with an average operating price of US$97,181 per coin; subsequently, WLFI exchanged all cbBTC for WBTC holdings.

The move came on the same day that Coinbase announced it was delisting WBTC for failing to comply with CEX standards. Coinbase delisted WBTC, and WLFI’s move was seen as support for WBTC.

WLFI's choice to exchange cbBTC for WBTC may be due to WBTC's maturity and infrastructure advantages in the market, or the addition of Justin Sun as a consultant may have influenced this decision.

Because BiT Global, the custody company owned by Justin Sun, and BitGo, the company behind WBTC, announced their cooperation in August this year. In this cooperation, the WBTC business was transferred from the original company to BiT Global and Justin Sun.

3)AAVE

AAVE is a decentralized borrowing protocol based on Ethereum that allows users to earn interest on deposits or borrow encrypted assets, which is the protocol launched by WLFI.

WLFI is also very active in investing in AAVE Token and has made allocations many times. WLFI once exchanged AAVE with a unit price of US$360 for US$246,000; and exchanged AAVE with a unit price of US$308.4 for US$1.25 million; in addition, it also exchanged AAVE with a unit price of US$297.8 for US$1 million. Currently, WLFI holds a total of 6.137 million AAVE.

4) LINK

The project behind LINK is Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network designed to provide reliable off-chain data for smart contracts on the blockchain. Simply put, Chainlink helps blockchains obtain and use external data.

WLFI has also invested frequently in LINK. It has deployed LINK at prices of US$34.2, US$25.5, and US$27, with a total cost of approximately US$8 million. Currently, the total number of LINK held by WLFI is 78,300.

It is reported that WLFI will be integrated with Chainlink oracles to accelerate the promotion and adoption of DeFi. Chainlink is currently the leading data oracle solution on the market. As a DeFi platform, WLFI may need to use Chainlink's oracle services to ensure the accuracy and security of its financial products. Therefore, purchasing LINK may be to obtain and use Chainlink’s services and enhance the functionality and credibility of the platform.

5)ENA

Ethena (ENA) is a decentralized financial platform that ensures the stability of assets through an algorithmic stablecoin mechanism. ENA can be used for staking, trading, and governance. The platform provides efficient trading, liquidity mining and DeFi integration, aiming to provide stable and transparent financial services for crypto assets.

WLFI spent a total of US$750,000 to reserve 741,687 ENAs, with an average operating price of US$1.011 per coin; in addition, at a price of US$500,000, with an average price of 0.98 USDT per coin, it has reserved 509,954 ENAs, and currently holds a total of 741,000 ENAs. .

However, a spokesman for WLFI stated that the purchase of ENA Token is not directly related to the cooperation with Ethena Labs, but only shows WLFI’s confidence in the long-term viability and success of the Ethena network.

6) ONDO

The project behind Ondo is Ondo Finance, a DeFi protocol based on Ethereum that aims to transform traditional liquidity services into the tokenization of real-world assets and connect crypto assets and the real economy. Its main product is bond RWA. At present, Ondo has launched four products on Binance Futures, including U.S. Monetary Fund OMMF, Blackrock Short-Term U.S. Treasury Bond ETF OUSG, Tokenized Notes USDY, and Flux Finance that supports tokenized securities collateral.

For Ondo, WLFI only had one configuration operation, spending a total of US$250,000 to configure 134,000 ONDOs, and the average price during the operation was US$1.86 per coin.

03. What other information was disclosed?

It can be seen that the WLFI project has recently made many on-chain operations. Its configured Tokens include stablecoins (USDT), mortgage loans, RWA, oracles, and encapsulated Bitcoin projects, which basically cover on-chain DeFi. of all categories. In addition to our obvious DeFi asset reserve, we can also see the following points from the project’s on-chain activities:

1) Use Safe multi-signature wallet

Safe multi-signature wallet is an asset management tool based on smart contracts that improves the security of digital assets through a multi-signature mechanism (which requires multiple accounts to sign together). It supports flexible setting of signing rules. In the Safe multi-signature wallet, it can be set to single signature (such as 1/1), where one person can authorize transactions, or configured to multi-signature (such as 2/3 or 3/5). The preset number of signatories needs to be met to complete the operation. It is also compatible with a variety of blockchain and Token types and is widely used in team fund management, DAO financial operations, personal asset protection and custody services. It is favored by Web3 users for its high security and transparency.

The Safe multi-signature wallet operated by WLFI on the chain has a total of 7 signers, one of which is an active DeFi user.

2) Token exchange through the built-in Cowswap of the Safe wallet

On-chain data shows that WLFI has conducted more than 150 transactions through the decentralized exchange CowSwap in less than two months. CoW Swap is the front-end of CoW Protocol. As a DEX aggregation protocol that integrates functions such as Batch Auctions, Trade Intents and MEV protection, it is deployed on Ethereum and Gnosis and is one of the currently popular DEXs.

Due to the large number of exchanges conducted by WLFI through its wallet, the price of CoW Protocol's native token COW once surged by more than 30% in 24 hours, and increased by more than 80% in 7 days.

3) Measurement behind Token selection

Diversified investment portfolio: By allocating Tokens in different fields, WLFI can not only reduce the volatility risk of a single asset, capture more market growth opportunities, but also use market heat to enhance the capital operation effect.

Enhance DeFi ecological influence: Most of these Tokens are DeFi core assets. Allocating these Tokens will help WLFI expand its layout and influence in the DeFi ecology.

Strategic cooperation opportunities: Certain allocated specific assets (such as ENA and ONDO) may be considered based on cooperation with these projects, thereby enhancing their own brand value and market voice.

Generally speaking, this is in line with the development goals of the WLIF project, which is to continuously improve its influence through various methods to build a comprehensive on-chain borrowing and trading platform.

04. Summary

If the price of BTC previously climbed from US$70,000 to over US$100,000 due to the "Trump effect", then the Token held by WLFI was also driven by this effect. For example, on December 14, after WLFI configured LINK and AAVE, the floating profit of LINK position was US$299,000, and the floating profit of AAVE position was US$338,000. On December 16, with the spread of WLFI operation news, ONDO price exceeded 2.1 USDT, setting a record high, with a 24-hour increase of 16.33%.

Therefore, there are rumors in the market that WLFI’s assets may become the benchmark for established DeFi, and there are many speculations about what crypto assets WLFI will reserve next?

Some think that the team behind the investment consultant deserves attention, some think that the top players in each track, such as projects with large asset value and high brand value, may become new targets, and some think that the top 100 high-quality DeFi assets by market value cannot be ignored.

But we will have to wait and see what actions WLFI will take next.