Key Takeaways
- The project announced that it used onchain measures to blacklist wallets identified as compromised before trading began.
- According to WLFI, the breaches came from end-user incidents such as lost private keys rather than a flaw in the protocol
World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a decentralized finance initiative linked to U.S. President Donald Trump, said it intervened against attempted hacks during the launch of its token this week. The project announced that it used onchain measures to blacklist wallets identified as compromised before trading began.
Taking to X, WLFI noted that the breaches came from end-user incidents such as lost private keys rather than a flaw in the protocol. The project said its “mass blacklisting” transactions prevented attackers from targeting its Lockbox, a vesting feature that holds allocations under time restrictions. Two blockchain records published on Etherscan were shared to demonstrate the intervention.
The team added that they are working with affected users so accounts can be restored.
The token, WLFI, opened for trading on Monday with the release of 24.6 billion units. The rollout came after investors approved a July vote allowing early buyers to sell up to 20% of their holdings. Founders, including members of the Trump family, were excluded from that sale authorization.
Security threats surfaced soon after trading began. Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics company, reported clusters of “bundled clones”—contracts designed to mimic WLFI’s smart contract in order to deceive investors and siphon funds.
The launch highlighted growing risks in Ethereum’s ecosystem following the May Pectra upgrade. The update added EIP-7702, giving externally owned accounts temporary functionality similar to smart contract wallets. While designed to make transactions more efficient, experts have raised concerns of how it created an attack vector that could allow fund theft with only an offchain signature.
WLFI said its protective steps were necessary to prevent theft and that it would continue monitoring activity targeting the token.
As per reports, Trump himself holds roughly 15.75 billion WLFI tokens worth more than $3.4bn, drawing criticism of potential conflict of interest
