On February 26, 2026, the WLFI team proposed a new proposal regarding governance staking, sparking community debate. In this version, tokens that are not locked must be staked for 180 days to participate in governance, receiving a reward of approximately 2% annualized return from the treasury, while setting the legal number of votes required for governance at 1 billion WLFI, with a voting period of 7 days. Under the amplification effect of tags related to the Trump family, this technical proposal was given a stronger connotation of power struggles: is it truly rewarding long-term participants or is it a “second stake” limitation on old users who have already locked their tokens? The deeper question is that this new rule may reshape the internal power structure and value distribution path within WLFI, determining who will have a voice in future governance and who will be gradually marginalized.
Dissecting Perspectives: Voting Rights Converted to “180-Day Staking Certificate”
● The core of the rule design is to completely distinguish between “freely circulating WLFI” and “WLFI eligible for voting.” According to the proposal, any tokens not in a locked state wishing to participate in governance must first enter 180-day staking, losing liquidity during this half-year period in exchange for voting rights and certain earnings. This design clearly aims to filter out short-term speculative funds, leaning governance seats towards holders who are willing to bind their fate with the project in the medium to long term.
● For holders willing to accept a six-month lock-up, the proposal offers compensation of approximately 2% annualized governance staking rewards from the treasury. On the surface, this is a "subsidy" for the opportunity cost of long-term participants, endorsed by assets in the protocol treasury; however, whether the 2% level is a substantial incentive or merely a symbolic benefit largely depends on market expectations of WLFI's future volatility and other earning opportunities.
● At a procedural level, the proposal sets the legal number of 1 billion WLFI and a 7-day voting window, significantly raising the threshold for governance proposals to transition from "approval process" to "actual implementation." Such a high legal number requirement means that a proposal can only take effect if it is collectively mobilized by large holders, nodes, and a broad base of small holders; the 7-day cycle also provides the market with ample space for gaming and reserves sufficient room for public opinion warfare and mobilization efforts.
● Behind this set of thresholds is the tough trade-off between “liquidity” and “governance participation.” On one hand, longer staking periods and higher legal numbers can raise the entry threshold for governance participation and suppress noise; on the other hand, it forcibly ties some originally flexible chips to governance seats, forcing funds to choose between “maintaining liquidity” and “gaining voting rights,” thereby altering the entire capital structure of the protocol and the composition of participants.
Narrative Interweaving: Direct Conflict between Locked Old Users and New Stakers
● The core argument of supporters is that this staking design can redirect the arbitrage profits originally concentrated in market makers and professional institutions back to ordinary participants willing to lock their funds for the long term. Some point out that this effectively extracts the value created during the “USD1 expansion phase” from high-frequency trading, allowing ecological contributors rather than pure arbitrageurs to become the ultimate beneficiaries through governance staking interest rates and weight allocation.
● Critics directly point to fairness issues: many users have already locked their WLFI based on old rules, and now having to accept the condition that “to gain complete governance rights, one must accept the new staking logic” is seen by many as a rewriting of the rights of existing holders. @Ikrd27 has publicly stated that “imposing new restrictions on already locked tokens is unfair,” and this sentiment resonates strongly within the old user group.
● In terms of the governance weight algorithm, this proposal uses a “staking quantity × square root of remaining lock-up time” weighted model, which appears to strike a balance between quantity and time but fundamentally alters the power dynamics between different holding structures. Short-term large stakers can quickly amplify their influence through scale, while long-term small holders leverage their time factor, causing strategies like “heavy short lock,” “light long lock,” and “staggered rolling lock” to present completely different yield curves in governance power.
● Around this design, a tripartite tug-of-war has gradually formed within the WLFI community: first, long-term holders who have already locked their tokens and wish for their historical commitments to be respected; second, short-term funds and market makers who value liquidity and are worried about new rules eroding their arbitrage space; third, the team and relevant parties with political and brand prestige, looking to ensure the controllable continuation of the project narrative through structured rules. The three-way power struggle continues to escalate on social platforms, making this proposal a struggle for technical parameters, but rather a barefaced redistribution of power.
From USD1 Arbitrage to Long-Termism: Where Does Value Flow?
● The official narrative provided by the WLFI team is to transfer the arbitrage value generated during the USD1 expansion phase from short-term liquidity providers and professional market-making institutions to “true long-term participants who bear ecological risks.” In their logic, it is inevitable that the early development of USD1 will create numerous无风险 or low-risk arbitrage windows for liquidity, and the governance staking system is the key tool to reroute this portion of the dividend back to the community.
● In reality, arbitrage channels related to USD1 were previously more easily captured by market makers and institutions with the technology, capital, and hedging ability, making it difficult for ordinary users to participate at the same speed and scale. This path, where “technical dividends skew towards professional funds,” has long caused dissatisfaction within the community, and the new proposal aims to address this structural issue by attempting to balance the distribution of benefits among ecological participants through governance rewards.
● Once the governance staking plan is implemented, the division of arbitrage profits among stakers, market makers, and the protocol treasury will be rewritten. A portion of the profits that originally belonged to pure capital games may flow back to locked holders in the form of annualized rewards, voting rights amplification, and potential node equity; meanwhile, market makers will need to reassess their willingness to participate between continuing to bear liquidity obligations and accepting “extractions” of earnings, and this outcome will profoundly affect the depth and efficiency of USD1 and the entire WLFI ecosystem.
● The key question is whether this restructuring initiated in the name of “long-termism” represents a return to value or a form of implicit taxation on liquid capital. For supporters, sacrificing some immediate liquidity for more stable and sustainable governance rights and returns is a necessary road for the project to mature; for opponents, forcibly attaching long lock shackles to voting rights in essence excludes “less committed” funds from the power structure, making long-termism gradually degenerate into a political label for different funding preferences.
Nodes and Supernodes: Power Imagination in Information Vacuum
● In this proposal, the WLFI team also proposed the concept of node and supernode structure to build more layers for future governance architecture. However, until now, the publicly available information about the benefits that nodes can gain and the governance privileges they hold remains vague, without a clear explanation of the differences from ordinary stakers, nor detailing key clauses such as priority rights and profit-sharing logic.
● Various claims have already begun circulating in the market regarding the staking threshold for nodes and the percentage of profit-sharing, such as specific values and ratios, but all of these have been clearly marked as unverified information. In the absence of formal documents, these types of figures cannot be viewed as definitive and should not serve as the basis for investment decisions; otherwise, they risk being “solidified” as facts in secondary dissemination, misleading subsequent entrants.
● From past experience, multi-tier node structures often concentrate governance power invisibly: only a few participants who can stake large amounts and endure long-term locking will have the opportunity to enter nodes or even supernodes, thereby holding higher weight in key processes such as proposal initiation, validation, and execution. This design can easily give rise to “oligopoly groups” within the protocol, reshaping what was originally a relatively flat community structure.
● Because details have not yet been disclosed, discussions surrounding nodes and supernodes in the community exhibit a strong overlay of expectations and panic effects. Supporters see it as an opportunity to advance toward specialized governance, attracting institutions and professional operators into the space; skeptics worry that the project will use node thresholds to permanently lock power in the hands of a few. During this information vacuum period, any fragmentary rumors will be amplified as narrative weapons, exacerbating emotional rifts regarding this proposal.
Escalation of the Game Under the Aura of the Trump Family
● Thanks to its association with the Trump family tag, every governance adjustment of WLFI inherently carries topic-related traffic. In external narratives, this is not only viewed as an ordinary optimization upgrade of a crypto project but is interpreted as an experiment in “political capital testing on-chain governance,” attracting numerous observers who do not typically engage deeply with the crypto market, pushing the project into a more spotlighted environment.
● Under such an aura, the tightening of governance rules and long lock incentives are more easily interpreted by outsiders as a form of “power consolidation project”: by designing long-cycle staking, a node structure, and voting thresholds, a small group of individuals who are truly capable of holding long-term and enduring volatility is fixed at the power center while slowly squeezing short-term, retail, and marginal funds out of the decision-making layer. Whether this interpretation is fair is certainly debatable, but it possesses a high degree of transmissibility in the arena of public opinion.
● As traditional political resources and on-chain governance mechanisms begin to intertwine, the chips and demands of retail investors, institutions, and the team become more complicated. Retail investors hope to amplify the project's sound through political aura, increasing token premiums, yet worry about being diluted in the rewriting of rules; institutions care about whether the system is stable and the returns are predictable; while the team needs to balance maintaining brand image, consolidating governance structure, and responding to community skepticism, making each proposal a microcosm of multiple party negotiations.
● Compared with previous projects endorsed by celebrities, it is not difficult to find that governance disputes are almost the “standard script” of this industry——the celebrity effect brings traffic dividends in the early phase, but as it enters a stage of refined rule-making, it often transforms into continuous scrutiny of “who truly holds power.” The current adjustments by WLFI regarding voting rights, node structure, and long-term staking are likely to proceed along a similar trajectory: evolving from the initial brand topic to a long-term inquiry into the sustainability of power structures.
The Night Before the Vote: Governance Upgrade or Power Lockdown
The proposal binds together the voting threshold, staking rewards, and governance weight algorithm, forming a combination that nearly rewrites the governance logic of WLFI: the legal number of 1 billion WLFI and a 7-day voting cycle raise procedural thresholds, while the 180-day staking combined with approximately 2% annualized rewards shapes a new structure of participation costs and returns, and the weight model of “staking quantity × square root of lock-up time” redistributes the seats of different holding strategies in governance. Supporters are most concerned with the prospect of long-term participants gaining greater voice and arbitrage returns flowing back to the community; opponents worry about the additional conditions imposed on existing locked assets, liquidity being squeezed, and the node structure reinforcing oligopoly, making these core conflicts unlikely to be fully resolved by a single vote in the short term.
Looking ahead, if the proposal passes smoothly, WLFI is highly likely to advance along the route of “enhancing long-termist narratives,” attracting participants who prefer long-term play, gradually constructing the project into a high-threshold, strong governance, and weak liquidity system; if the proposal encounters strong resistance or is rejected, then the fractures surrounding locking, fairness, and node design will be further magnified, increasing the risk of community division, and any subsequent compromise proposals will face greater challenges in rebuilding trust. Before formal voting and the implementation details are finalized, what truly deserves attention is the complete document and node terms explanation that the official is about to release, especially regarding the currently rumored staking thresholds and profit-sharing ratios. Regardless of which side one stands on, one should avoid making irreversible decisions based on unverified data and turning emotional voting into asset risks.
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