What is World Liberty Financial? The Trump family’s DeFi project explained

US President Donald Trump has a long list of crypto businesses, earning around $1 billion as of October 2025. Among them, one Challenge the project called World Liberty Financial could be the most important.

The platform, which President Trump co-founded, according to its website, with his three sons, wants to make finance “trustworthy, open and adapted to the way the world works today”.

World Liberty Financial was announced by President Trump’s son Eric in August 2024. It is led by DeFi builders Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, as well as other members of the Trump family and Zach Witkoff, son of longtime Trump ally Steve Witkoff.

Details on how the project will work are still quite rare. Let’s take a look at what we know so far.

A DeFi project based on Ethereum

Built using the Aave protocol, World Liberty Financial’s platform hasn’t been released until October 2025, but the project says it plans to “keep the dollar digital” and provide “loans to institutions and everyday users.”

DeFi – short for decentralized finance – is the sphere of the crypto industry that aims to replace traditional banking. DeFi projects, financial platforms that operate without third-party intermediaries, are typically applications built using Ethereumthe blockchain behind the second largest cryptocurrency, ETH.

World Liberty Financial also runs on Ethereum.

It is worth noting that while there are many DeFi applications, the space remains a highly experimental part of the crypto industry and has been plagued by hacks and scams.

Players in the DeFi space generally say they want to streamline an existing slow and expensive banking system, and World Liberty Financial has so far sold itself as the quintessential DeFi project: a borrowing and lending platform that will “unlock financial access for all, replacing the limitations of traditional banking with open on-chain infrastructure, creating a fairer system, where opportunity is not defined by location, status or authorization.

What can you do with World Liberty Financial?

While you can’t take out loans using the platform yet, you can buy its native token, WLFI, which had a market cap of $3.56 billion as of October 2025, making it the 43rd largest cryptocurrency in existence, according to CoinGecko data. WLFI is available on major exchanges like Binance, Coinbase and OKX.

The project also has its own stablecoin, USD1, running on Ethereum And BNB Channelwhich Decrypt first revealed in October 2024. The stablecoin is also available on major US exchanges like Coinbase And Kraken.

Stablecoins are digital tokens tied to the value of fiat currencies – in the case of USD1, the US dollar. Assets are a key part of the DeFi economy (and the broader crypto economy) because traders use them to quickly enter and exit digital asset transactions. Instead of using dollars in traditional banking channels, digital tokens speed up the process of trading cryptocurrencies.

The Trump family’s involvement

President Trump is listed as “co-founder emeritus” on the World Liberty Financial website, meaning he has not been involved with the project since taking office in January. His close friend and White House special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is also on the list of “co-founders emeritus.”

Still, the Trump and Witkoff families likely made a lot of money from the project: Steve Witkoff’s son, Zach, and the president’s three sons, Eric, Donald Jr., and Barron are all still actively involved in World Liberty Financial.

WLFI’s market cap is more than two and a half times larger than the meme coin launched by President Trump before his inauguration, Official Trump (TRUMP). The Trump family owns a significant portion of WLFI’s offering; their net worth increased by more than $6 billion when the tokens began trading in September.

Conflict of interest concerns

The Trump family’s involvement in WLFI has proven controversial. Democratic lawmakers have frequently criticized the project as well as the president’s other crypto projects. In May 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren took aim at a $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund MGX in leading crypto exchange Binance, which used the $1 token, calling it “shady.”

Prominent House Democrats also called on Treasury to provide access to all suspicious activity reports, or SARs, on Trump’s digital asset projects, including World Liberty Financial.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed concerns about his family’s involvement in crypto businesses including World Liberty Financial, saying he “didn’t look into” the profits.