World Liberty investors clash over WLFI token unlocks

Token-holders in Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial approved a governance resolution that purports to unlock the token and “make $WLFI tradable.”

Additionally, the proposal noted that some of the tokens sold to early supporters “will be eligible to be unlocked upon launch of tradability.”

Furthermore, it notes that “Founders, team, and advisor tokens will not be unlocked initially and will be subject to a longer unlock schedule than early supporters to demonstrate long-term commitment and alignment with the success of the protocol.”

This is an important caveat given how many tokens were reserved for team members and Donald Trump.

Read more: Is World Liberty Financial a dead project?

After this vote passed, the World Liberty Financial team took to X to note that before it can go live it’s “holding for one of the largest alignments yet, something that will bring massive attention and clarity to the project.”

The team has also claimed that it’s “NOT opening another pre-sale round.”

Despite this claim that the sale isn’t open and will not be opened, there have been investors who have recently been able to come on board, like Aqua 1/Aqua1.

Read more: World Liberty promised AAVE lending six months ago — so where is it?

Some retail investors aren’t excited about the current version of the unlock strategy, taking to the World Liberty Financial governance forums to express their discontent.

One user, Herminio Coragem, has proposed a maximum unlock of 1,000 tokens per year, which would mean that the 22.5 billion tokens held by Trump-affiliated DT Marks DEFI LLC would take approximately 22,500,000 years to unlock completely.

For context, Homo sapiens are estimated to have existed for approximately 300,000 years.

Another proposal suggests that those with more than one billion tokens should only receive 1% of their total token supply in the initial unlock.

Read more: Trump-affiliated USD1 has $0 in excess reserves

Another user claims in the forum, “Any continued restriction via allowlist control is an artificial lock that serves no technical or security purpose. It only undermines investor confidence and market transparency.”

The replies disagree.

One user goes in the other direction and claims that those who purchased in October should “get to sell before those who brought in March.”

This same user has another post with the title, “Caution for WLFI in avoiding a lawsuit” in which they claim that, “WLFI posted in its bylaws that any token purchased will not be tradable for a minimum of one year.

They add, “Many people bought a lot of tokens with that expectation. If WLFI trades before October 15, they will be in violation of their own bylaws, and possible grounds for a class action lawsuit by those who expected to hold for one year.

The user concludes, “It’s called a ‘bait and switch’ lawsuit. They really should consult a GOOD attorney before releasing the tokens.”

A different user makes the seemingly false claim that, “It has not happened in the history of crypto, that PAID FOR pre-sale tokens were subject to unlocks/vesting rules.”

If you’re concerned that this user is losing faith in the World Liberty team, you can rest easy as they add, “Many community members are already disappointed by the delay — I am not, I trust the team.”

Read more: Donald Trump’s crypto project copied code from hacked app, report

Despite these users who disagreed in the discussion forum there was broad consensus on the governance proposal with 99.94% of voting tokens voting in favor.

Broadly, most of the token holders seem excited about the possibility for them to transfer and sell their tokens, however, this controversy has reignited the often quiet discussion forums for this project.