The Protocol: The Secret Code Behind Trump Family Crypto Project

In this week's issue of CoinDesk's weekly newsletter on blockchain tech, we've got the secret details underpinning the former president's plan for World Liberty Financial, as well as the rankings of which tokens performed the least-poorly in ugly August crypto markets.

CoinDesk's weekly newsletter on blockchain tech is out with new details about former President Donald Trump's plan for World Liberty Financial and rankings of tokens that performed the worst in August's ugly crypto markets.

It's been well reported that the allure of crypto has proven too much to resist for the family of former President Donald Trump, even in the midst of a major national campaign with less than two months to the election. CoinDesk reporters managed to get their hands on the secret "white paper" that lays out the family's plan to make the U.S. the "crypto capital of the planet."

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The similarities are remarkable between the user interfaces for Dough Finance, left, and now-deleted code from World Liberty Financial (GitHub)

DEFI DON: It's only been a few weeks since The Protocol detailed Donald Trump's family's increasingly cozy relationship with blockchain, with son Eric Trump tweeting he had "fallen in love with crypto" and the former president's own words inspiring scads of mostly worthless and duplicative memecoins. On Aug. 23, the elder Trump promoted a forthcoming decentralized finance (DeFi) platform called "The DeFiant Ones" to his 7.5 million followers on the social application Truth Social, before last week announcing that the endeavor would instead be called "World Liberty Financial," part of a plan to make the U.S. "the crypto capital of the planet." Details remained scant, but a few of my CoinDesk colleagues have managed to scrape public sources and track down documents to bring more of the Trumps' plan to light.

As reported by our Danny Nelson, metadata associated with the website worldlibertyfinancial.com says "the only crypto DeFi platform supported by Donald J. Trump" will connect users to "decentralized finance's best tools for secure, high-yield crypto investments." It calls on users to "join the financial revolution today!" A trademark filed for World Liberty Financial in mid-July also points to an association with DeFi, and the lawyer who filed the trademark papers, Alex Golubitsky, confirmed to CoinDesk late last week that the trademark relates to Trump's crypto ventures.

Then on Tuesday, CoinDesk's Sam Kessler, along with Nelson and Cheyenne Ligon, reported on a secret white paper for World Liberty Financial that the president's inner circle has been privately shopping around. The story reads: "The document and other reporting describe a borrowing and lending service strikingly similar to Dough Finance, a recently hacked blockchain app built by four people listed as World Liberty Financial team members. Other participants include all three of Trump's sons, including 18-year-old Barron, who is identified as the project's 'DeFi visionary.'" (DeFi is short for "decentralized finance.")

The project's figurehead is none other than the Republican presidential nominee himself, bearing the title, "Chief Crypto Advocate," with Eric and Donald Trump Jr. involved as "Web3 Ambassadors."

As if this weren't all entertaining enough, the project is reportedly aided by a cast of characters who, in other times and other contexts, might give campaign-vetters pause. They include Zachary Folkman, listed in the white paper as World Liberty Financial's head of operations, and Chase Herro, its data and strategies lead. A limited liability corporation for World Liberty Financial is registered to Folkman, who, along with Herro, is the co-creator of Subify, which bills itself as a censorship-free competitor to both Patreon and OnlyFans – both services that let customers pay content creators, with the latter skewing toward explicit content. Folkman previously registered a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC and posted seminars on YouTube on how to pick up women. Herro has appeared as a guest on popular podcasts including YouTuber Logan Paul's podcast "Impaulsive," where he has discussed his past stints in prison for drug-related charges, and how he got rich as a "self-made businessman."

Herro, Folkman, World Liberty Financial and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. In an epilogue: Shortly after CoinDesk reported on project's whitepaper, social-media accounts for at least two Trump family members were hacked in an apparent effort to promote a crypto scam.

On Wednesday, the team reported that the current plan calls for some 70% of project's new WLFI tokens will go to project insiders, an unusually high proportion that compares with 5%-20% in other examples.

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