Journalist
Posted: November 20, 2025
Key Takeaways
How much did World Liberty Financial recover?
WLFI executed an emergency function, burning 166.667M WLFI tokens from compromised wallets and reallocating them to secure addresses.
What happens to users who haven’t verified?
Wallets for users who haven’t completed KYC reverification remain frozen. However, they can still start the recovery process through WLFI’s help center.
World Liberty Financial executed an emergency smart contract function recently, burning 166.667 million WLFI tokens worth $22.14 million from compromised addresses and reallocating them to secure recovery wallets.
Arkham analyst data shows two transactions from the World Liberty Fi Deployer address to the Strategic Reserve address, both moving the same amount of WLFI tokens.
Source: Arkham
The emergency function was designed for two specific scenarios: when an investor loses wallet access before vesting, or when a malicious account acquires WLFI through an exploit.
Phishing attacks compromised user wallets before launch
WLFI revealed that a small subset of user wallets were compromised before the platform’s official launch.
Attackers gained access through phishing attacks or exposed seed phrases—third-party security lapses rather than vulnerabilities in WLFI’s smart contracts or platform infrastructure.
The team froze affected wallets in September to prevent further unauthorized access.
Since then, they have built and tested new smart contract logic to handle bulk reallocations, ensuring that user funds remain protected throughout the recovery process.
Emergency function built into WLFI token design
The emergency burn-and-reallocate mechanism was built into WLFI’s smart contract architecture from the start.
This function allows the deployer to reclaim tokens from compromised addresses and redistribute them to verified users through secure channels.
While WLFI spent months testing the reallocation logic, the team maintained that meeting regulatory requirements and protecting user funds took priority over rushing the recovery process.
World Liberty Financial is backed by the Trump family and launched its governance token earlier this year.
The project has faced scrutiny over its token structure and regulatory positioning, making this security incident and subsequent recovery a critical test of its operational credibility.
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