Trump-backed WLFI passes proposal letting $5 million stakers buy 'direct access' to team

Tech

Share

Share this article

Copy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmail

Trump-backed WLFI passes proposal letting $5 million stakers buy 'direct access' to team

The governance vote passed with 99.12% approval from 1,800 voters, with 76% of tokens coming from just 10 wallets.

By Shaurya Malwa|Edited by Sheldon Reback

Updated Mar 16, 2026, 9:55 a.m. Published Mar 16, 2026, 9:09 a.m.

Make us preferred on Google

The WLFI governance vote passed almost unanimously. (Lisa-S/Shutterstock modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

• World Liberty Financial token holders approved a three-tier staking system that requires up to a $5 million WLFI lockup for top-level benefits, including guaranteed access to the project's team.
• The new Node and Super Node tiers redirect arbitrage and subsidy economics from market makers to large stakers, while effectively creating a paywall for projects seeking partnership discussions.
• The vote passed with 99.12% support, heavily concentrated among a handful of wallets, as WLFI pursues broader ambitions including a national trust bank charter and tokenization of real estate and energy assets.

World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol linked to the family of U.S. President Donald Trump, put a $5 million price tag on 'direct access' to team members in an almost unanimous governance vote.

Token holders of the venture backed by Eric and Barron Trump passed a proposal on Friday that creates a three-tier staking system for its WLFI governance token.

The Base tier requires a 180-day lock-up to vote. The Node tier requires staking 10 million WLFI, roughly $1 million, and grants the ability to convert stablecoins to WLFI's USD1 at 1:1 parity through licensed market makers. The Super Node tier requires 50 million WLFI, roughly $5 million, and grants "guaranteed direct access to the WLFI team for partnership discussions."

The vote passed 99.12% in favor out of 1,800 votes cast. Over 76% of the voting tokens came from just 10 wallets.

WLFI spokesman David Wachsman told Reuters on Sunday that the "direct access" refers to the business development team and executives, not specific founders, and doesn't guarantee a partnership.

The company's own Gold Paper, however, lists co-founders Eric Trump, Barron Trump and Steven Witkoff's sons Zach and Alex as part of the team "supporting the WLF commitment."

The proposal's stated motivation is redirecting value from market makers to long-term participants.

WLFI said that during its USD1 stablecoin expansion, market makers captured millions in arbitrage at roughly 15 basis points per cycle, and WLFI paid millions more in redemption subsidies. The Node and Super Node structure routes those economics to large stakers instead.

The Super Node tier is where the proposal goes beyond governance mechanics. WLFI currently receives "more partnership inquiries than it can productively engage with," the proposal says.

The $5 million staking requirement "serves as a filter to prioritize projects and platforms that are actively supporting and participating in the WLFI ecosystem, rather than those seeking partnership on a purely opportunistic basis."

Projects that want to talk to the team now need to invest in WLFI tokens and lock them for six months. That creates buying pressure on the token, reduces circulating supply, and generates a captive audience of large holders who are financially invested in the protocol's success before any partnership discussion even begins.

Meanwhile, WLFI is also pursuing a national trust bank charter through the OCC, exploring tokenization of real estate and oil and gas assets, and considering the creation of a publicly traded company to hold WLFI tokens.

WLFIGovernanceVote

Meer voor jou

Visa is ready for AI agents. So is Coinbase. They're building very different internets

Door Shaurya Malwa|Bewerkt door Aoyon Ashraf

21 uur geleden

The next trillion-dollar payments network won't have a checkout page. No card number, no CVV, no human at the keyboard. Just machines paying machines, thousands of times a second, for fractions of a cent.

Wat u moet weten:

• Crypto and AI leaders argue that autonomous AI agents will soon conduct far more online transactions than humans, favoring crypto wallets over bank accounts because they bypass identity checks and compliance hurdles.
• Proponents say stablecoins and protocols like Coinbase's x402 make sub-cent, high-frequency machine-to-machine payments economically viable in a way that traditional card networks, with minimum fees around 30 cents, cannot match.
• While x402's current volumes are low and include significant artificial activity, traditional card networks like Visa and Mastercard are rolling out their own AI-agent payment tools, setting up a likely split between regulated human commerce on card rails and stablecoin-based payments for AI agents.

Lees volledig verhaal

Latest Crypto News

Altcoins jump as bitcoin inches toward potential $74,000 breakout

11 minuto ang nakalipas

Fed headlines central bank rate decisions, Gemini earnings: Crypto Week Ahead

2 oras ang nakalipas

Australian Senate panel backs crypto regulation framework

4 uur geleden

XRP climbs 3% past $1.47 as breakout extends on broad bitcoin-led move

5 uur geleden

Bitcoin briefly tops $74,000 as ether, sol, ada gains as much as 6% in Monday surge

5 uur geleden

Bitcoin's price trades above its 50-day average as bullish move gathers pace

6 uur geleden

Top Stories

Crypto trading firm Blockfills files for bankruptcy

6 uur geleden

The math behind Strategy’s path to 1 million bitcoin by the end of 2026

14 mrt 2026

AI developers may not be keen on crypto, but stablecoins are the secret to agentic finance, crypto insiders say

14 mrt 2026

Wall Street pushes tokenized stocks, but institutions aren’t eager to trade them

14 mrt 2026

Here is why Nasdaq and owner of NYSE are putting the $126 trillion equity market on blockchain

18 uur geleden

Visa is ready for AI agents. So is Coinbase. They're building very different internets

21 uur geleden