In-depth analysis of the value of World Liberty Financial: A new choice under the disadvantage of Trump's campaign funds

Original author: @Web3 Mario(

Abstract: First of all, I wish everyone a happy Mid-Autumn Festival. During the holiday, I discovered an interesting topic and researched World Liberty Financial, a Decentralized Finance project that has been very popular recently and involves Depth, a member of the Trump family. In the twitter space on September 17th, they made more detailed commitments, including the distribution of WLFI Tokens, and the project’s vision. Trump also spent a long time at the meeting discussing an optimistic attitude towards the encryption field. So, for a project that seems not so ‘Web3 style’, how to grasp its value? On this point, the author has done some research, gained some insights, and is sharing them with you. In general, I believe that the core value of World Liberty Financial lies in seeking new fundraising channels to alleviate the fundraising disadvantage of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Therefore, the essence of investing in WLFI Tokens is a bet on Trump’s election, which is a form of political donation.

The negative image of Lianchuang and the non-specific roadmap have made World Liberty Financial controversial.

Many articles have already introduced the background of this project. Here is a simple review. In fact, this project has been controversial since its announcement, with controversy focusing on three main areas:

The background of the founding team is somewhat negative: considering that two members of the Depth team are from the Trump family, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and they do not have much experience in the encryption industry. The industry background of Trump’s two sons is still related to real estate. Therefore, it is generally believed that the actual operators of the project are their two co-founders, Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro. Trump stated in the live broadcast that Herro and Folkman were introduced to Trump’s sons by real estate industry investor Steve Witkoff. Before that, the two had worked together on a Decentralized Finance lending project called Dough Finance, which was established in April 2024 and was hit by a Flash Loans attack on July 12, resulting in losses of more than 1.8 million US dollars. After that, the project entered a stagnant state. In addition, the resumes of the two are not the elite route for most technology or financial industry entrepreneurs. Folkman’s more influential project before was called ‘Data Hotter Girls,’ which was a dating teaching seminar, and Herro had a criminal record in the past.

Unclear product roadmap: Although the Trump family has been promoting the project with vague descriptions and promising that it will do many things in the past month, in fact, the project is not likely to publicly release more detailed and accurate planning or descriptions. In this twitter space, Folkman seems to give some descriptions that the project does not attempt to create new financial tools but aims to improve the usability of Decentralized Finance. During the fireside chat, Little Donald Trump talked about his family’s experience of being “debanked”, which refers to the difficulties some individuals or companies encounter when obtaining credit limits from traditional financial institutions. So it is not difficult to see that the project’s focus at the beginning of its launch should still be on the lending scenario. However, such information seems to be insufficient to convince the majority of people and acknowledge its vision and business logic.

Centralization problem of WLFI Token tokenomics: In this interview, Folkman also provided a detailed allocation plan for WLFI Token, with 20% of the project’s tokens allocated to the founding team, including the Trump family, 17% of tokens used for user rewards, and the remaining 63% of tokens available for public purchase. However, such allocation ratio seems to be quite different from traditional Web3 projects. Tokens are basically concentrated in the hands of the team and whales, without even any allocation for community incentives.

So why would a project that doesn’t seem very attractive receive strong support from the Trump family, especially at such a sensitive time leading up to the election? I believe the core reason is to find new fundraising channels and alleviate the disadvantage of Trump 2024 campaign in fundraising. Therefore, investing in WLFI Token is essentially a bet on Trump’s election and a form of political contribution.

Trump’s current campaign funds are at a clear disadvantage and he hopes to find more flexible fundraising channels.

We know that the federal government of the United States is composed of three parts: the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and the executive branch, with the executive branch obtaining positions through appointment, recruitment, or examination. The legislative branch, specifically Congress, is composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives, with members of both houses elected. The judicial branch is between the two, and different state laws have different provisions. During his presidency, Trump appointed more than 200 federal judges, greatly changing the ideological composition of the federal judiciary. This is also why he was able to maintain countermeasures during the legal crisis in the first half of the year.

And the essence of the election is a political show, which requires a lot of money for publicity to gain more voter support. The channels for publicity cover both online and offline aspects. Moreover, considering that the entire publicity process has actually started a year before the election, the capital required is far from the same level as events such as movies or concerts. The publicity rhythm is affected by some unexpected events, but it is highly likely to maintain an increasing trend to allocate budgets. The closer the election is, the faster the funds will be consumed.

Due to having legislative power, this process will form some interest groups between politics and business. Some large-scale entrepreneurs will choose to fund some politicians in exchange for their promotion of certain bills that are in line with their own interests after the politician’s successful election. This donation is called political contributions. In order to avoid excessive rent-seeking and the worst corruption, US law has designed some bills to standardize the entire process, among which the “527 organization” is a tax-exempt organization designed for candidates to raise funds to support elections. Of course, it is also subdivided into many types, with different designs for the scale of capital received and the methods of use.

In general, the performance of politicians in key events or the encounter of unexpected events significantly affects the amount of funds they raise, as the funding for politicians is also phased. For example, a bad debate or a sudden scandal will affect the confidence of funders in the overall future election situation, leading to a halt in donations. Therefore, the fundraising situation can accurately reflect the performance of the candidates.

After introducing this background knowledge, let’s take a look at the gap between the Trump 2024 campaign team and the current Harris 2024 campaign team in fundraising. This gap is mainly reflected in two aspects, the scale of funds and the efficiency of allocation.

First of all, with regard to the scale of funds, in fact, the Democratic Party has always been ahead of the Republican Party in fundraising, and this situation has become more and more intense after Harris was confirmed. It seems that the supporting forces within the Democratic Party have completed the integration and begun to support this inexperienced candidate. As of now, the Harris team has raised a total of 7.7 billion US dollars and has spent 4.4 billion US dollars. The Trump team has raised a total of 5.7 billion US dollars and has spent 3.1 billion US dollars. In terms of remaining funds and past expenditures, the Trump team undoubtedly has a significant disadvantage. This is also why, after the assassination attempt, Trump’s momentum has been declining, except for successfully forcing the Democratic Party to replace Biden. Moreover, in the first presidential debate last week, in terms of debating skills, Harris undoubtedly performed better, which allowed her to raise 50 million US dollars quickly within 24 hours after the debate, indicating her strong fundraising ability.

Of course, it’s also interesting to see the difference in supporters between the two. Following Biden’s attracting support from billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Harris herself has also garnered support from multiple wealthy individuals, including Hoffman, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, and philanthropist Melinda French Gates (wife of Bill Gates). On July 31, over 100 venture capitalists signed a letter supporting Harris’s candidacy and pledging to vote for her, including entrepreneur Mark Cuban, investor Vinod Khosla, and billionaire Chris Sacca, founder of Lowercase Capital. On the other hand, Trump’s core supporters include banker Timothy Mellon, wrestling magnate Linda McMahon, energy industry executive Kelcy Warren, BCH Supply founder Diane Hendricks, oil tycoon Timothy Dunn, and prominent conservative donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, of course, including TSL founder Elon Musk. However, it can be seen from this list that Harris’s supporters are more from the emerging tech industry, while Trump’s supporters focus on traditional sectors. In terms of online promotion, Harris undoubtedly has a stronger advantage, especially since Musk acquired Twitter. This has helped Trump mitigate this disadvantage, so you will find that after Trump returns to Twitter, his online marketing will undoubtedly revolve around the platform.

In terms of specific funding channels, Harris’s external funding is mainly raised through the Carey Committee, while Trump’s main source is the SuperPAC. Both organizations belong to the 527 organization just introduced, which has the advantage of unlimited funding. However, in terms of fund expenditure, the former has greater flexibility. The Carey Committee has two independent accounts: one for traditional restricted donations (which can be donated directly to candidates and parties), and the other for unrestricted independent spending (for advertising, propaganda, etc.). However, the Super PAC cannot directly coordinate with a candidate’s campaign team or party, nor can it directly donate to a candidate. This makes Trump’s team much weaker than Harris’s team in terms of fund utilization efficiency.

This will break everyone’s traditional impression that Trump, as a businessman, should have more advantages in terms of capital. However, the situation is quite the opposite. The Harris team currently has a clear financial advantage, and this advantage is further expanding. So it is easy to understand why at this time, a not yet mature encryption project is launched, which also indicates the hope of finding more flexible fundraising channels through the encryption field. This can also be seen as a practical expression of pleasing the previous encryption enthusiast voters to a certain extent. So it is worth taking some risks for this, of course, this also explains why the project is based on the explanation WLFI will follow Regulation D terms for fundraising without a detailed roadmap, which is a guarantee to control risks within an acceptable range. This is the key to the problem.

So for the Trump team, there are actually many ways to benefit from this project, besides the direct benefits of ICO sales. There is also an interesting project, which is to cash out using the lending platform. Do you remember the problem that little Donald Trump mentioned about his family suffering from de-banking? Assuming that World Liberty Financial, as a successful lending protocol, attracts certain funds, the team can use a large number of WLFI tokens controlled as collateral to lend out real gold and silver from the platform without causing a significant impact on the Secondary Market price, just like the founder of Curve. This can indeed alleviate the problems encountered.