Trump Crypto Project Submits Proposal to Ethereum DeFi Giant Aave

Former President Donald Trump’s long-rumored decentralized finance (DeFi) project is slowly coming together, with more details coming to light today.

World Liberty Financial submitted a proposal on Wednesday to the governance forum of Ethereum DeFi platform Aave—upon which Trump and his business partners intend to build their crypto offering. 

The project has proposed that it launch its services as an instance on Aave, meaning that the popular DeFi protocol would provide the infrastructure to allow World Liberty to function. In return, AaveDAO—the group of Aave token holders that govern the platform—would receive a substantial 20% of all protocol fees generated by World Liberty, and 7% of the supply of WLFI, the project’s governance token. 

While WLFI was initially described as "non-transferrable," Wednesday's proposal states that users will receive the token as a reward for participating in World Liberty liquidity pools. It's unclear how the project will be able to allow AaveDAO to take custody of WLFI tokens and then dole them out to users if the tokens are in fact non-transferrable. Representatives for World Liberty Financial did not immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment.

AaveDAO community members will now discuss the proposal and whether they should vote to allow Trump and his associates to build their DeFi offering on Aave’s decentralized lending protocol. Holders of WLFI would also have to separately approve the plan.

The proposal also revealed that World Liberty will initially allow deposits in Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), and the popular stablecoins USDC and USDT. The project claims it will first aim to provide stablecoin liquidity for ETH and WBTC, with a specific focus on attracting first-time DeFi users—presumably, people familiar with the Trump brand, but less familiar with the intricacies of liquidity pools and digital asset borrowing. 

Last month, Trump and several associates including his sons, Eric and Don Jr., and fellow New York billionaire Steve Witkoff, announced World Liberty, which will offer borrowing and lending services for cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum blockchain network, not unlike the vast array of existing applications in DeFi—such as Aave.

Both then and today, the World Liberty team has doubled down on pitching the project as a more “user friendly” alternative to existing DeFi options like Aave, which can be difficult to navigate without considerable technical know-how. In its pitch to AaveDAO members, World Liberty’s team promised that their project could “bring a significant number of new users and new liquidity to Aave.”

Much still remains unknown about World Liberty, namely how—and where—it will function. In late September, the project opened up whitelists to allow select Americans—only accredited investors—to purchase WLFI tokens. The tokens will be offered under a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule that only allows particularly wealthy or knowledgeable investors to participate as a way to mitigate risk. 

Questions had lingered about the World Liberty Aave instance itself, though—should it gain approval and eventually launch. Previously, the World Liberty team said it intended for all Americans to be able to use the platform “in the future.”

The project’s team confirmed to Decrypt, though, that the proposed World Liberty Aave instance would be accessible to all Aave users—meaning that Americans could indeed use it. 

That’s not a plan without its risks. Other similar U.S.-based DeFi protocols, like Uniswap, have received notice in recent months that the SEC plans to sue them for allegedly offering illegally unregistered securities.