World Liberty Financial proposes new staking-focused governance system for WLFI holders

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto project closely tied to the Trump family, has introduced a governance proposal that would require holders to stake their unlocked WLFI tokens to participate in voting.

The proposal, published on Wednesday on the WLFI governance forum, said it aims to deepen community participation and redirect financial value away from intermediaries and toward long-term holders.

Under the proposed multi-tiered staking system, unlocked WLFI tokens need to be staked for at least 180 days to gain governance rights. Holders of locked tokens can continue voting without staking, according to the proposal.

Voting power would be calculated using a square-root weighting model that considers both the amount staked and the remaining lock-up duration, a mechanism intended to prevent excessive concentration among large holders.

The system also introduces governance-linked incentives. Stakers who participate in at least two governance votes during their lock period would earn a base reward with a 2% annualized yield target, funded from the WLFI treasury.

World Liberty Financial called the proposed incentives “one of the most significant steps forward in the evolution of WLFI.”

WLFI edged up 0.16% in the past 24 hours to trade at $0.11. It holds a market cap of $3.2 billion, according to The Block’s price page.

Tiers

The proposal further establishes a tiered participation structure tied to staking size. Users staking at least 10 million WLFI, worth roughly $1 million, would qualify as “Nodes” and gain access to licensed market makers, allowing them to convert stablecoins such as USDT and USDC into World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin at a 1:1 rate.

Stakers of over 50 million WLFI would earn the title of “Super Nodes” and receive additional benefits such as priority partnership opportunities with the project team and potential eligibility for economic incentives on approved integrations.

The project framed the model as a way to redirect arbitrage profits captured during the recent USD1 expansion — estimated at 15 basis points per mint-sell cycle — from market makers to long-term token holders.

“The Node mechanism redirects this value from a small number of intermediaries to long-term ecosystem participants, while simultaneously creating structural demand pressure on competing stablecoins,” the team said in the proposal.

The proposal requires a quorum of 1 billion eligible WLFI voting tokens and a simple majority to pass. A seven-day voting window will open once the proposal moves to a snapshot vote.

The governance proposal comes as the project seeks to strengthen the integration between its WLFI token and the USD1 stablecoin ecosystem. USD1 recently faced market volatility, briefly edging lower to $0.99707 earlier this week. The team described it as a coordinated short and social media attack.