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Key Takeaways
- Six wallets, not four as previously reported, moved 30 billion WLFI tokens into a vesting contract with a two-year cliff and three-year release period.
- The largest wallet retained 14.175 billion tokens after a mandatory burn, matching Trump’s disclosed founder allocation.
- The move coincides with, but appears unrelated to, new Clarity Act ethics language that would require officials with major crypto holdings to divest or use a blind trust.
An $800 million token allocation matching President Donald Trump’s disclosed stake in World Liberty Financial entered a vesting contract in May, blockchain records show, setting the first concrete timeline for when the previously locked tokens could become sellable. The schedule points to 2028 as the earliest possible unlock date.
How the Vesting Contract Works
On May 19, six wallets holding World Liberty Financial’s insider WLFI allocation moved a combined 30 billion tokens into a new vesting contract, according to on-chain data. Joining the contract required an immediate burn of 10% of the deposited tokens, followed by a two-year cliff and a three-year release period after that.
The largest single wallet deposited 15.75 billion WLFI and retained 14.175 billion tokens after the mandatory burn, a figure that matches the “founder allocation” Trump has disclosed as his personal stake. Two other wallets deposited 3.75 billion WLFI each, and three more deposited 2.25 billion each.
The mechanism itself was created through a governance vote that passed on or around May 6, backed by 11,537 wallets.
It gave holders of founder-level tokens the option to trade an indefinite lockup for the fixed two-year cliff and three-year vesting schedule. Participation was optional under the project’s own published terms; holders who opted out remain locked indefinitely.
On-Chain Review Finds Six Wallets, Not Four
A review of blockchain data identified six wallets participating in the vesting contract, more than the four described in an earlier report on the same transaction. That earlier report also described an even three-way split of tokens among Trump’s sons, a pattern the on-chain data reviewed here does not show.
Beyond the single wallet matching Trump’s disclosed allocation, ownership of the remaining wallets could not be independently confirmed using blockchain data alone.
David Wachsman, a spokesman for World Liberty Financial, said the vesting terms were the result of a community vote.
“The community voted in support of a founder burn. For this to happen, co-founders moved their tokens into a smart contract that would effectuate the burn. The same governance proposal ensures that co-founders have the strictest conditions and the longest vesting schedule of all token holders.”
Timing Coincides With New Ethics Provisions in Congress
The new vesting schedule surfaces as the latest draft of the Clarity Act includes stricter ethics language that would require senior government officials with significant crypto holdings to divest those interests or place them into a qualified blind trust.
Trump has reportedly agreed to that provision, which had been one of the central sticking points holding up the bill’s path through the Senate.
The sequence of events suggests the vesting transaction was not made in direct anticipation of the legislation. The six wallets entered the contract months before the Clarity Act’s current ethics language emerged, and World Liberty Financial had published the vesting mechanism’s terms weeks before the wallets moved into the new schedule.
Whether and how the bill’s divestment provisions would apply to Trump’s WLFI allocation depends on the legislation’s final form and the legal treatment of his specific holdings. The bill has not passed and still requires 60 votes to clear the Senate.
A Stake That Has Already Generated Income
Trump’s WLFI holdings have drawn scrutiny throughout his second term because they represent a sitting president holding a substantial financial stake in a crypto venture while his administration helps shape federal policy toward the industry.
Trump has already profited from the project. His 2025 financial disclosure listed roughly $515 million in income tied to the sale of WLFI tokens released by World Liberty Financial, with his family collecting a share of proceeds each time the venture sells tokens to outside buyers.
Until the May transaction, Trump’s founder-level tokens carried no fixed date for becoming sellable. They held substantial paper value but no defined path to cash. The new schedule replaces that indefinite lockup with a specific two-year cliff.
The vesting contract itself is now the single largest holder of WLFI, controlling about 46.1 billion tokens, just under half of the token’s total supply. WLFI’s total supply has fallen to roughly 96.7 billion tokens from an original cap of 100 billion, below the 4.5 billion the project had projected would be burned if every eligible insider joined the vesting plan.
