World Liberty Financial Proposes Burning 4.5 Billion Insider Tokens in 62-Billion Token Vesting Overhaul

The Trump-linked DeFi project is asking founders and team members to permanently destroy 10% of their allocation, or remain locked indefinitely, as it tries to restore credibility after a bruising week.

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the DeFi project backed by the Trump family, submitted a governance proposal this week to place 62.3 billion previously unlocked tokens under structured multiyear vesting schedules. The overhaul requires insiders to accept immediate, permanent losses in exchange for any path to liquidity.

Under the plan, founders, team members, advisors, and partners holding 45.2 billion WLFI must agree to burn 10% of their allocation, roughly 4.5 billion tokens destroyed on-chain, before a two-year cliff and three-year linear vest begins. Those who decline remain locked indefinitely but retain governance voting rights. Early supporters holding 17 billion WLFI receive more favorable terms: a two-year cliff and two-year vest, no burn required.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

WLFI framed the vesting proposal as addressing a “governance overhang,” noting that only roughly 23% of eligible locked tokens had participated in prior votes. The seven-day vote requires a quorum of 1 billion tokens and a simple majority to pass.

The proposal arrives amid significant turbulence. Last week, CoinDesk reported WLFI had deposited 5 billion of its own governance tokens into Dolomite, a lending protocol co-founded by a WLFI advisor, and borrowed $75 million in stablecoins, a move that briefly restricted other depositors’ access and drew broad scrutiny. The token fell to an all-time low of $0.077 the day the story broke.

The controversy deepened when Tron founder Justin Sun, once WLFI’s largest outside backer, publicly accused the project of treating investors as a “personal ATM” and alleged a hidden blacklist function allowed the team to freeze token holders’ wallets without governance approval. WLFI denied the accusations and threatened legal action. WLFI traded near $0.079 as of Wednesday, down roughly 48% from the average price at which the project’s own treasury conducted $65.6 million in open-market buybacks over the past six months.