Quick breakdown
- A small group of wallets controlled nearly 60% of the voting power in WLFI’s USD1 proposal vote.
- Locked WLFI holders were unable to participate, fueling governance centralization concerns.
- Critics question tokenholder value as WLFI offers no revenue share despite protocol expansion.
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) is under fire after a governance vote approving a USD1 stablecoin growth proposal passed amid complaints that a large portion of tokenholders were excluded from voting.
Onchain data shows that voting power was heavily concentrated among a small group of wallets allegedly linked to the WLFI team or strategic partners. According to pseudonymous DeFi researcher DeFi^2, the top nine wallets controlled roughly 59% of total voting power, effectively determining the outcome of the proposal.
Haven’t seen anyone else talk about this yet, so I wanted to bring up an alarming governance vote by World Liberty Fi this month that appears to be the start of a slow extraction of value from WLFI holders by the team:
What you see above appears to be a rigged vote, where the… pic.twitter.com/CGsj7vVUUk
— DeFi^2 (@DefiSquared) January 20, 2026
The single-largest wallet accounted for 18.786% of the total voting power based on the snapshot used for the vote.
DeFi^2 contrasted these addresses with smaller holders whose WLFI tokens remain locked following the token generation event (TGE), leaving them unable to participate in governance or vote on token unlocks.
Tokenholder incentives questioned amid USD1 expansion
Critics argue that prioritizing a USD1 growth proposal through governance raises concerns about alignment with WLFI tokenholders, particularly given that WLFI does not provide revenue-sharing rights.
DeFi^2 pointed to the project’s Gold Paper, which states that 75% of net income is allocated to entities tied to the Trump family, while the remaining 25% goes to entities associated with the Witkoff family, with no direct revenue entitlement for WLFI holders.
One tokenholder who voted against the proposal warned that expanding USD1 incentives could further dilute investors without delivering tangible benefits. The user noted that World Liberty Financial has already deployed hundreds of millions of dollars of investor funds to build a treasury that includes Bitcoin, Ether, and Chainlink, yet WLFI holders receive no direct upside from those assets.
World Liberty pushes deeper into regulated finance
The governance controversy comes as World Liberty Financial accelerates its expansion. Earlier this month, the firm applied for a U.S. national trust banking charter, aiming to bring issuance, custody, and redemption of its USD1 stablecoin under a single regulated entity.
If approved, the charter would allow World Liberty to mint and redeem USD1 directly, enable fee-free conversions between USD and USD1, and expand services to institutional users. The firm also recently launched World Liberty Markets, an onchain lending and borrowing platform built around USD1 and the WLFI governance token.
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