World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is the governance token of the World Liberty Financial platform, a decentralized finance ecosystem launched in 2024 that also issues the USD1 stablecoin. It is deployed as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, with additional deployments on BNB Smart Chain and Solana. Holders use WLFI to vote on protocol decisions rather than to earn revenue or dividends. The platform is pursuing a federally chartered U.S. trust bank to bring stablecoin issuance and custody in-house.
WLFI's differentiation is political and regulatory: the project is directed by individuals connected to the Trump family, giving it visibility and lobbying reach uncommon among governance tokens. Its ecosystem's USD1 stablecoin had reached a market value of roughly $4 billion by August 2026, and the platform secured preliminary U.S. federal approval for a national trust bank charter in August 2026 to bring stablecoin issuance in-house. WLFI itself, however, carries no revenue share or equity claim on this activity.
WLFI is a pure governance token: it carries voting rights over protocol decisions such as technical upgrades and partnership signaling, but confers no dividends, revenue share, or equity interest. Each token equals one vote, capped at 5% of votable supply per wallet to limit concentration in any single vote. A community-approved staking mechanism lets holders lock tokens for 180 days in exchange for voting eligibility and potential yield rewards.
WLFI has a maximum supply of 100 billion tokens, with roughly 31.78 billion (31,776,906,044) in circulating supply as of 2026-08-31. This gives a market capitalization of approximately $1.8 billion and a fully diluted valuation of about $5.6 billion.
WLFI launched through a whitelisted public sale that opened in October 2024, following the project's announcement and Ethereum contract deployment on 2024-09-29. The initial sale released 20 billion tokens at $0.015 each; sales were slow until surging after the November 2024 U.S. election, closing around January 2025 having raised approximately $300 million. A subsequent sale of 5 billion tokens at $0.05 each raised a further $250 million, bringing the combined public sale total to roughly $550 million from more than 85,000 investors, covering about 25% of total supply.
WLFI originated on Ethereum, an ERC-20 token deployed 2024-09-29 (contract 0xdA5e1988097297dCdc1f90D4dFE7909e847CBeF6), where it settles using Ethereum's proof-of-stake consensus. Parallel deployments of the same governance token exist on BNB Smart Chain, which uses proof-of-staked-authority consensus, and on Solana, which combines proof-of-history with proof-of-stake. Ethereum carries the deepest liquidity and largest holder base of the three deployments.
World Liberty Financial was founded in 2024 by Zachary (Zak) Folkman, Chase Herro, Zach Witkoff, and Alex Witkoff, alongside members of the Trump family. Zach Witkoff, son of Steve Witkoff, serves as CEO and board chair. Donald Trump holds the title “Chief Crypto Advocate,” Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. hold “Web3 Ambassador” titles, and Barron Trump is listed as “DeFi Visionary.” Notable investors include Aqua 1 Foundation ($100 million) and Justin Sun (~$75 million+), the latter now in litigation with WLFI.
The token is issued by World Liberty Financial Inc. DT Marks DEFI LLC, an entity affiliated with Donald Trump and family members, owns 60% of the company and is entitled to 75% of revenue from WLFI coin sales. Following the removal of Folkman and Herro as directors, DT Marks DEFI LLC became the company's sole director. A UAE-linked investor group tied to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan holds a 49% stake in WLTC Holdings, the holding company for World Liberty's planned trust bank.
WLFI governance is on-chain and token-weighted, covering protocol upgrades requiring multisig implementation and non-binding signaling votes on partnerships and marketing. A July 2025 community vote broadened token utility, enabling trading after a non-transferable launch. Treasury exposure includes a $1.5 billion treasury company, Alt5 Sigma, announced in August 2025 to hold WLFI on its balance sheet.
In August 2026, the OCC granted preliminary conditional approval for a national trust bank charter, World Liberty Trust Company, N.A. The approval (Corporate Decision #1385, issued August 14, 2026) would let the platform bring USD1 stablecoin issuance and custody in-house under federal supervision. As a condition, Eric Trump, Zak Folkman, and investor Hamad Khalfan Ali Matar Alshamsi signed passivity commitments limiting their influence over the new bank entity. USD1 was also launched natively on the Canton Network in 2026.
WLFI has not completed a formal third-party smart-contract audit. CertiK's Skynet platform lists an automated security score of 90.86 (AA rating), but the same page explicitly marks the project “Not Audited By CertiK,” with no third-party audit on file — the score reflects a heuristic scan, not a published audit.
A pre-launch incident saw a subset of user wallets compromised via phishing or exposed seed phrases, characterized by the project as a user-security issue rather than a smart-contract exploit. Holder concentration is extreme: the top 10 addresses control 85% of on-chain supply, and Ethereum liquidity stood at $3.9 million.