Good news, the WLFI you invested in is about to unlock; bad news, you'll have to wait until Trump gets off work first.
- Core Viewpoint: The Trump family's crypto project WLFI has released a new token unlock proposal, significantly extending the remaining lock-up period for early supporters and insiders to 4-5 years. This move has sparked intense controversy for going against community expectations and allegedly suppressing opposing voices through comment control.
- Key Elements:
- WLFI sold approximately 33.893 billion tokens through two public presales and one institutional presale, accounting for 33.893% of the total supply. Users have only unlocked 20% so far.
- The new proposal stipulates that the remaining 80% of tokens for presale users will be subject to a two-year lock-up followed by a two-year linear release (totaling 4 years). Team and partner allocations will require 5 years for full unlocking.
- The proposal includes a "mandatory" clause: if holders do not accept the new plan, their tokens will be locked indefinitely, which has met with strong community backlash.
- The official forum is flooded with numerous uniformly formatted "YES" replies, suspected to be team-controlled comments, while sporadic genuine user comments express anger.
- Analysis speculates that the team's initiative to burn 10% of internal tokens might be a "performance" to placate the community, with the core purpose being to lock up supply long-term to maintain the current distribution pattern favorable to them.
Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)
Author｜Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On the evening of April 15, the official team of World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Trump family's crypto project recently mired in controversy, released a community proposal regarding the "unlocking of WLFI tokens for early supporters, founders, team, and partners." Unsurprisingly, this has once again thrust WLFI into the spotlight of public debate.
- Odaily Note: For details on the recent controversies surrounding WLFI, please refer to "Sun Ge 'Rights Protection' Confronts Trump Family, WLFI is the Real Crypto Scythe."
Public Sale History and Early Unlock Status
There's no need to elaborate on the basic information about WLFI. Here's a brief review of the project's public sale history and early unlock status.
WLFI has a total supply of 100 billion tokens. It previously opened two rounds of public presales to the public.
- The first round of presale began in October 2024 at a price of $0.015 per token, with a total of 20 billion tokens (20% of the total supply). The first round progressed slowly initially due to significant FUD in the market at the time. However, after Trump announced the token, WLFI's popularity gradually increased. It ultimately sold out the 20 billion WLFI tokens on January 20, 2025, raising $300 million.
- Immediately after the first round concluded, WLFI launched a second round of presale at a price of $0.05 per token, with a total of 5 billion tokens (5% of the total supply). The second round sold out on March 14, 2025, raising $250 million.
- In addition to the two public sales, according to WLFI's official tokenomics, the project also conducted presales for strategic investors and institutional participants, totaling 8.893 billion tokens (8.893% of the supply) at a price of $0.1 per token.
In summary, WLFI sold a total of 33.893 billion tokens (33.893% of the total supply) through presales.
On September 1, 2025, WLFI officially launched, and presale participants experienced their first unlock. Users who participated in the two public presale rounds could unlock 20% of their tokens after signing the token unlock agreement and completing the activation process. The remaining 80% was subject to future governance decisions. Institutional investors' allocations remained locked.
After its launch, WLFI was initially hyped by the market. Its on-chain price briefly exceeded $0.45 on the first day, and prices on some second and third-tier exchanges even spiked above $1 for a short period. In the following months, WLFI's price gradually declined from above $0.2 and is currently reported at around $0.08 at the time of writing.
For users who participated in the first WLFI presale (cost basis $0.015), even with only 20% of tokens unlocked, selling them over the past few months would have allowed them to recoup their principal and even make a profit. However, for second-round presale participants (cost basis $0.05), most have not yet recovered their principal unless they sold during the initial high-price surge.
Most users weren't overly concerned initially — surely unlocking the remaining 80% would guarantee some profit? But as WLFI's price continued to fall, presale participants' anticipation for the subsequent unlock grew more urgent.
Yet, no one expected WLFI to introduce complications with the unlock rules.
WLFI's Unlock Proposal, or Rather, Unlock Notice
According to the proposal posted by WLFI's official team on the forum, the unlock rules for the remaining WLFI tokens held by early supporters (presale users), founders, team, advisors, and partners are as follows.
- For presale users (currently involving 17,043,666,558 WLFI tokens; this number may change as some presale users have not yet claimed their tokens), all locked tokens will undergo a two-year cliff period, followed by a two-year linear vesting period — meaning it will take four years to fully unlock.
- For founders, team, advisors, and partners (involving 45,238,585,647 WLFI tokens), 10% of all locked tokens (i.e., 4,523,858,565 WLFI) will be permanently burned and removed from the total supply. The remaining 90% (40,714,727,082 WLFI) will undergo a two-year cliff period, followed by a three-year linear vesting period — meaning it will take five years to fully unlock.
Alright, here come the issues. Most users who considered investing in WLFI were drawn by the Trump family name. But now, asking people to wait four more years to receive their tokens? By then, Trump's current presidential term would have long ended. It's questionable whether Trump would even remember his sons' involvement in this project, and his own status at that time is uncertain...
Another point that must be mentioned: perhaps to showcase WLFI's decentralized spirit, the proposal "humanely" states that if the proposal is passed, tokens belonging to holders who do not explicitly accept the vesting plan will remain locked indefinitely — in other words: "You can disagree, but if you do, they're locked forever!"
Perhaps anticipating strong community resistance, WLFI even engaged in comment moderation on the official governance forum. As shown in the image below, a quick scroll reveals numerous highly uniform, suspected bot replies (all starting with YES).
Finding a genuine human reply is rare. One such reply stated: "Damn, I'm gonna send these bastards to jail!"
Speculation on WLFI Team's Motives
Finally, let's speculate on the WLFI team's motives. Some are asking why the WLFI founders and team would voluntarily burn 10% of their tokens. Personally, I see two possibilities.
One is that the WLFI team possesses great altruism, sacrificing for the community. The other possibility is that burning 10% of the tokens is merely a performance to placate community sentiment ("Look how much we've sacrificed, it wasn't easy"). After all, the value of a 10% portion that won't fully unlock for several years is itself questionable. The WLFI team's true desired outcome might be to lock everything up, as the current token distribution aligns with their maximum interests. Even if they can't openly access their allocated tokens, there are likely various hidden allocations under different guises — that's the real purpose of tokenomics models.
The above is purely personal speculation. If you ask which one I believe more, it's definitely the first one.
