World Liberty Financial, the crypto platform backed by the Trump family, is facing a significant governance crisis after posting a proposal that would lock early investor tokens for up to four years, with indefinite restrictions imposed on any tokenholder who refuses to accept the new schedule. The supporting evidence appears in the cited X post.
The proposal appeared on the platform’s governance forum and triggered an immediate wave of public condemnation from some of the project’s most prominent backers.
Justin Sun, the crypto entrepreneur and Tron founder who holds a 4% stake in World Liberty Financial, described the plan as “one of the most absurd governance scams I have ever seen” in a post on X. Sun’s public rebuke carries particular weight given that he is both one of the platform’s advisers and its largest reported individual investor.
What the Proposal Actually Says
Under the terms outlined in the governance forum post, early investors in World Liberty Financial would face an additional two-year lockup on their WLFI tokens before a staged release begins over the subsequent two years.
That means some early backers could wait up to four years in total before accessing their holdings in full.
The clause that drew the sharpest criticism, however, is the condition applied to dissenters.
According to the proposal, tokenholders who do not accept the new unlock schedule would “continue to have their tokens locked indefinitely.” Critics interpreted this as a coercive mechanism designed to force consent from investors who have little practical alternative.
World Liberty spokesman David Wachsman said in an emailed statement that the proposal “was designed to further align all the participants in the WLFI ecosystem for the long run” and confirmed that a formal vote would open soon and run for one week.
The company did not directly address the accusations of coercion or the backlash from Sun.
Sun Accuses Platform of Freezing His Voting Rights
Sun’s frustration extends beyond the substance of the proposal itself. He stated that World Liberty has frozen his tokens, effectively barring him from participating in the vote he is publicly opposing.
He claimed that a “large number of holders with significant voting rights are in the same position,” suggesting the disenfranchisement may be broader than his individual case.
This is not Sun’s first public dispute with the platform. He has recently clashed with World Liberty over a separate governance proposal and accused the project of maintaining controls that could be used to blacklist specific wallets.
World Liberty denied those allegations at the time, but the repeated nature of Sun’s criticism points to a deepening rift between the platform and one of its most financially committed stakeholders.
Simon Dedic, founder of venture capital firm Moonrock Capital, added his voice to the backlash, writing on X that early WLFI investors “who thought they were sitting on solid profits just got rugged.” Dedic framed the timing of the proposal as calculated, noting that the unlock structure conveniently aligns with the remainder of Donald Trump’s presidential term, giving the platform what he called “another shot at squeezing the same lemon they’ve been inflating with hot air for the past two years.”
The criticism from both Sun and Dedic reflects a broader anxiety in the crypto community about governance structures that can be altered after capital has already been committed. Early investors in World Liberty entered the project under a specific set of expectations about when and how they could access their tokens.
A retroactive change to those terms, especially one that penalizes non-compliance with permanent lockups, raises serious questions about investor protection in unregulated crypto platforms.
The WLFI token has not responded well to the controversy in price terms, though the situation predates this specific proposal. The token was trading near 8 cents at the time of the forum post, flat over the prior 24 hours but down more than 40% since the start of 2026.
Measured from its all-time high of 33 cents reached on September 1, 2025, the first day of public trading after holders voted to unlock the originally non-tradable token, WLFI has shed more than 75% of its peak value.
That decline has unfolded against a backdrop of broader weakness in both crypto and traditional equity markets, though the project’s internal governance disputes have added a layer of project-specific pressure that goes beyond macro conditions.
The governance vote, once opened, will run for seven days. With Sun’s tokens reportedly frozen and a portion of the broader holder base potentially in similar circumstances, questions about whether the vote can produce a representative outcome are already circulating.
If the proposal passes under those conditions, it risks deepening the credibility gap between World Liberty Financial and the wider investor community it has courted since launch.
Not Financial Advice: This article is for informational purposes only. Crypto investments are highly volatile. Always do your own research.
