The WLFI launch this week was troubled by confusion and controversy, as retail investors, once again, bear the brunt of what many allege to be insider manipulation. WLFI froze Tron founder Justin Sun’s wallets after unusual transactions raised concerns of insider selling.

Sun is pressing the project to unfreeze his allocated tokens.

World Liberty Financial Drama Continues

On launch day, the community allocation, initially expected to be 5%, only saw 4% of tokens actually go live, as not everyone utilized the designated lockbox. WeRate co-founder Quinten Francois explained that liquidity and marketing, initially reported as 1.6%, actually accounted for 2.8% of the supply. This brought the circulating supply effectively to 6.8%.

Meanwhile, other allocations, such as the 10% ecosystem fund and 7.8% reserved for Alt5 Sigma, weren’t truly circulating. In fact, Francois said that they were simply unlocked but not subject to vesting schedules, which created an illusion of available supply that complicated price dynamics.

Adding to the complexity, Justin Sun held 3% of WLFI’s total supply. Only 20% of his stake was technically unlocked at launch. He publicly promised not to sell, saying that he supported World Liberty Financial’s long-term goal.

The token debuted at $0.20, with a $1 billion market cap, while trading volumes spiked into the billions, generating intense hype. Despite this, WLFI’s price steadily declined, and the on-chain price action appeared suspiciously mechanical rather than driven by genuine community selling.

Francois suggested a likely scenario behind the volatility. Exchanges may have offloaded part of the 2.8% liquidity allocation, while Sun allegedly leveraged his connections with HTX, offering users 20% APY to deposit WLFI. This setup would allow him to quietly sell his personal holdings while making it seem as if tokens were being staked by users, and even backfill user withdrawals with his own stack if necessary.

Reports indicate Sun moved early $9 million worth of WLFI tokens through HTX and Binance from his addresses, activity tracked by Nansen, Bubblemaps, and Arkham Intelligence.

Ultimately, WLFI froze Sun’s wallet using the guardianSetBlacklistStatus function, following these suspicious transfers. The freeze fueled speculation that Sun used user deposits to liquidate his holdings, turning retail investors into exit liquidity.

Sun’s Public Appeal

A community member praised WLFI’s governance vote that froze Sun’s address, saying it at least temporarily blocks him from repeating prior patterns of alleged pumping and dumping tokens on retail investors.

Meanwhile, Sun has publicly appealed to the World Liberty Financial team to restore access. He described the freezing of his tokens as “unreasonable” and stressed that, like other early investors, he “deserves the same rights.”

In a bid to calm nerves and regain investor confidence, Sun also went into damage control mode and tweeted that he sees US-listed crypto stocks as “an undervalued opportunity.” He further pledged to personally buy another $10 million of WLFI.

This is it: Final appeals are the last way to book your ticket to Osaka for Devcon 5

Note: All participants in the on-chain Devcon Ticket Raffle and Auction will receive an NFT-ticket to Devcon5! In the next days, your ERC-721 and will be issued to the addresses used in the on-chain sales and we’ll release a post detailing how to retrieve your ticket. For help with this process or other questions related to the on-chain ticketing processes, contact support@ethereum.org.

Over the last months, we’ve experimented with as many ways as possible to get Devcon tickets into the hands of Ethereum community members and to the general public. This year, our small team has fielded Builder, Student, Scholar, Speaker, Sponsor, and Press applications, we’ve been on an adventure through three public waves, an on-chain raffle and an on-chain auction. As a small percentage ticket codes from these processes go unclaimed, we’re left with a small reserve that will now be repurposed for a final appeals process.

The process for the Final Appeals window will be familiar to those that participated last year. To take part, simply fill out the form at the bottom of this page. From there, we’ll review the submissions for stand-out situations (tell us a bit about why you’d like to attend!), and then randomly select as many submissions as we have spots available.

All selected applications will receive a voucher code that will be active for a 48-hour window. When these codes expire, another round of applicants will have an opportunity to check-out.

By next week, we’ll have allotted the final Devcon passes, and the one-month countdown to joining together in Osaka will be underway. Thank you for your support, for being on this ride with us, and we hope to see you soon.

Devcon5 Final Ticket Appeals Form

Opens: Live now

Ends: Friday September 6, 2019 at 11:59PM Pacific Time (US)

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devcon team

Today, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided (via Bloomberg) to uphold the ruling from the original Epic v. Google lawsuit. This decision found the Play Store and the tech giant’s payment systems to be monopolies. As a result, Google will have to follow the remedies from that antitrust case. These remedies include limiting the company’s ability to pay phone makers to preinstall the Play Store, allowing developers to use other payment systems, and opening up Android to third-party app stores.

This decision comes after Google won a temporary administrative stay in 2024. However, Google was still forced to stop making deals with other phone manufacturers that prohibited shipping hardware with non-Google app stores installed.

After the ruling was handed down, Google’s VP of Regulatory Affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, provided the following statement:

This decision will significantly harm user safety, limit choice, and undermine the innovation that has always been central to the Android ecosystem. Our top priority remains protecting our users and developers, and ensuring a secure platform as we continue our appeal.

Developers Alliance Board Chair Jake Ward echoes the sentiment that Google offered. In a statement sent to Android Authority, Ward said:

The Ninth Circuit has spoken — and apparently, building a secure platform that sparks innovation is now grounds for punishment. By upholding the District Court’s remedies, the court has handed Apple complete dominance of the app market on a silver platter.

 

These misguided remedies will not promote competition or help consumers, but will jeopardize the trust and value that developers find in the Android ecosystem. Forcing Google to distribute third-party app stores on Google Play and allowing developers to link to unsecure destinations creates security concerns that will undermine consumer trust in Android.

 

In an unsettled economy, developers need support and stability — not judicial overreach that introduces new risks and barriers to success.

Meanwhile, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney praised the decision, claiming “total victory” on X (formerly Twitter). He followed that social post with another that announced that the Epic Games Store for Android will now be coming to the Play Store due to the verdict.

The US Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) dropped its appeal in a lawsuit against Calci, a New York-based forecast market, ultimately clearing the path the platform offers political event contracts, according to a court filing Monday.

Under the terms of the voluntary dismissal claim, which is still subject to court approval, the parties pay their own legal fees and Karshi waives their right to sue the CFTC for the sake of lawsuit.

“Today is historic. We have always believed in doing things the right way, no matter how painful or difficult it may be. This result is evidence of that.” “Karchi’s approach has officially and decisively secured the future of the American forecast market.”

Karshi’s fight with the CFTC began in 2023, when regulators denied Karshi’s plan to bet on which parties will control the council’s meeting room. At the time of denial, the CFTC subsequently argued that, under the guidance of former chairman Rostin Behnham – such a contract relates to an illegal game and “contrary to the public interest.”

That November, Karshi sued the CFTC in Washington, D.C., claiming that the CFTC tried to block the contract and exceeded its authority when asking the judge to make a decision. The court upheld the calci side in September 2024, clearing up the way the platform lists political contracts.

Shortly after losing the case, the CFTC scrambled to rescind the district judge’s decision. It applied for a 14-day stay for orders – essentially a two-week delay on Karshi’s ability to list contracts while the CFTC prepares for appeals – and was denied. He then filed an appeal and repeated many of the same arguments that he used in the original defense.

However, immediately after oral debate in early January, US President Donald Trump took office. His eldest son, Don Jr., joined Karshi as a strategic advisor on January 13th. CFTC general advisor Rob Schwartz, the CFTC, at the time the appeal was filed, left the agency in April after withdrawing from the lawsuit in March.

Under the leadership of acting chair Caroline Femme, the agency has changed its approach to cryptography, reducing several crypto-related guidance and reducing the number of one-type enforcement task forces to just two to simplify regulations and enforcement of the crypto industry.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling on Wednesday largely agreeing with a lower court’s 2023 decision to toss out a class action suit against decentralized exchange Uniswap.

A group of investors originally sued Uniswap Labs, the company behind the decentralized protocol of the same name, and some of its venture capital investors in 2022, alleging that the company was responsible for harming investors by allowing scam tokens to be issued on its protocol.

District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) sided with Uniswap in 2023 and scrapped the suit before it went to trial, likening the plaintiffs’ arguments to “a suit attempting to hold an application like Venmo or Zelle liable for a drug deal that used the platform to facilitate a fund transfer.”

Plaintiffs appealed Failla’s ruling in September 2023, but were largely shut down by the fresh decision from the Second Circuit on Wednesday. The Second Circuit judges affirmed Failla’s decision to throw out the plaintiffs’ claims under both the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, writing:

“In sum, we agree with the district court that it ‘defies logic’ that a drafter of a smart contract, a computer code, could be held liable under the Exchange Act for a third party user’s misuse of the platform,” the filing read.

The only part of Failla’s ruling that was vacated and remanded back to a district court – meaning the lower court will hear this sliver of the the plaintiffs’ case again – were the state law claims, which essentially seek to try similar allegations under state, rather than federal law, in New York, North Carolina and Idaho.

The ruling is a win for Uniswap, fresh off the heels of Tuesday’s announcement that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would drop its investigation into the decentralized exchange which, under former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, was being probed for allegedly operating as an unregistered securities broker and unregistered securities exchange, as well as issuing an unregistered security.

Read more: SEC Drops Investigation Into Uniswap, Will Not File Enforcement Action

zkLend, a decentralized finance lending protocol on Starknet, has suffered a major security breach. As a result, it lost approximately 3,700 ETH, worth around $4.9 million.

The exploit has forced the platform to pause withdrawals while investigations continue.

Response to the Exploit

zkLend confirmed the incident in a series of X posts on February 11, stating that millions worth of cryptocurrency had been drained from its smart contracts.

“We are aware of the ongoing security incident on zkLend. The team is now investigating and will provide an update when possible,” the protocol stated. Hours later, they advised users to refrain from depositing or repaying funds while they worked to determine the root cause. They also halted all withdrawals to prevent further losses.

Following the attack, zkLend sought the services of several organizations, including StarkWare, ZeroShadow, Binance Security, and Hypernative Labs, to help track the hacker and recover the stolen funds. It also promised to share a more detailed analysis as soon as a post-mortem was completed.

The exploit affected several DeFi strategies linked to zkLend, including STRKFarm’s STRK, USDC, and ETH Sensei strategies, putting withdrawals on ice until the situation gets resolved.

According to blockchain security firm QuillAudits, the perpetrator, identified by the address 0x64…9109, first targeted a specific contract, 0x04…3b26, before siphoning the funds. They then moved the stolen assets to Ethereum, funneling it through the Railgun crypto mixer, a privacy-focused tool often used to obscure transaction trails.

On-chain data shared by the security platform showed several transactions leading to laundering activity, with 706 ETH, valued at about $1.8 million, already sent through the mixer.

Whitehat Bounty Offer

In a last-ditch effort to recover the funds, zkLend issued a direct message to the hacker, offering a 10% whitehat bounty. This would mean that the attacker would keep nearly 400 ETH worth more than one million dollars if the remaining 3,300 ETH were returned by 00:00 UTC on Valentine’s Day. The team also stressed that the offer is legally binding and releases the exploiter “from any and all liability” regarding the heist.

It isn’t the first time protocols on the wrong end of exploits have tried negotiating with bad actors to have funds returned. In March last year, WOOFI lost $8.5 million in a flash loan attack, and subsequently offered a percentage of the loot as a whitehat bounty.

Similarly, almost half a year before that, North Korean hackers stole more than $70 million from the CoinEx crypto exchange’s hot wallets, leading the platform to offer them what it termed a “generous bug bounty.”

Sadly, in both cases, no funds were ever returned despite the bounty pleas.