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After months of lackluster sales, the Trump family’s decentralized finance (DeFi) project World Liberty Financial received an infusion of support on Monday from none other than Justin Sun, the founder of the Tron blockchain.
Sun confirmed the purchase of $30 million worth of World Liberty's governance token, WLFI, to his followers on X (formerly known as Twitter). The project had previously sold slightly more than $20 million worth of the tokens, meaning that Sun now controls a healthy majority of the Ethereum-based WLFI tokens currently in circulation.
When World Liberty initially launched in late September, it sought $300 million in WLFI sales. Once the project opened to sluggish demand, however, it slashed that goal by 90%, to just $30 million in token sales.
We are thrilled to invest $30 million in World Liberty Financial @worldlibertyfi as its largest investor. The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub, and Bitcoin owes it to @realDonaldTrump! TRON is committed to making America great again and leading innovation. Let's go! pic.twitter.com/cISTsVYP1f
— H.E. Justin Sun 🍌 (@justinsuntron) November 25, 2024
Even that modified goalpost, however, proved elusive. Only today, with Sun’s massive token purchase, did the project finally eclipse $30 million in sales, effectively bringing its initial token offering to a close. The project said in an October filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it would terminate sales after eclipsing said milestone.
It’s also a key milestone for the project’s founders, who now will finally see a payout from their involvement with World Liberty. According to the project’s gold paper, only after $30 million has been raised to establish a reserve for expenses and obligations, will key participants including President-elect Donald Trump see a payday.
That threshold has finally been reached today, thanks to Sun. Per the same gold paper, a Delaware-incorporated LLC associated with Trump will now earn 75% of net protocol revenues, including token sales, earned in excess of the initial $30 million raised.
That means that from Sun’s token purchase alone, the Trump-affiliated entity should rake in $15 million.
While World Liberty has said that project team members like Trump have indicated an intent to deploy earned fees back onto the World Liberty platform once it launches, it is not clear what, if anything, would commit them to doing so.
Decrypt reached out to the World Liberty team with questions about today’s token sale and its implications for the project but did not immediately receive a response.
Sun, for this part, appeared eager to connect his token purchase directly to Trump as an individual, weeks before the president-elect is set to retake the White House.
“The U.S. is becoming the blockchain hub,” Sun wrote today. “And Bitcoin owes it to Donald Trump!”
Edited by Andrew Hayward