HONG KONG — World Liberty Financial, the Donald Trump-backed crypto project, owes much of its early success to Justin Sun, the Chinese-born crypto billionaire who became an official advisor to the project after purchasing $30 million worth of its token, WLFI, said World Liberty co-founder Zak Folkman.

Folkman remarked that, «the goal of the project is being able to create progress to actually merge traditional financial institutions with decentralized finance,” in a panel at CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong conference.

For several weeks, the Trump-endorsed WLFI faced lackluster sales, failing to reach its $30 million fundraising target. The token was restricted from trading and only available to non-U.S. investors and accredited U.S. investors.

The project’s fortunes changed, however, when Sun stepped in. “This guy,” Folkman said with a gesture towards Sun, “saw that regardless of the outcome, this project is a monumental move forward for the entire crypto community.”

When Trump announced World Liberty Financial alongside his sons in October, they said it would be a lending platform based on Aave — a popular Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol. The platform has yet to launch, but according to Folkman, World Liberty is now developing «a whole range of products and applications» — not just a single tool.

Today, World Liberty Financial is known for WLFI, the governance token that it put up for sale mere days after the project was unveiled.

«When we were launching this project, it was a very heated time,» Folkman told the panel. «There was a lot of scrutiny on our project due to who was involved.»

After Sun’s 10-figure endorsement, “everything kind of snowballed from there,” said Folkman. World Liberty not only oversold its fundraising target, but it eventually set a new one. Should it meet its new goal — which it seems poised to do soon — Folkman noted that WLFI will become the fourth-largest initial coin offering (ICO) of all time.

Folkman claims WLFI’s success came despite «no VC backing and no special treatment to anybody who purchased the token.»

Sun, however, was elevated to an official World Liberty investor after his WLFI purchase. World Liberty also bought $10 million worth of TRX tokens — the native token of Sun’s TRON blockchain — and WBTC, a Sun-linked bitcoin derivative.

Earlier in Feb., Blockworks reported that World Liberty has been shopping a deal to crypto teams: If a company purchases WLFI tokens and pays an additional fee, World Liberty will add that company’s tokens to its portfolio — a powerful marketing instrument for up-and-coming crypto tokens.

“I’ve seen that going around,» Folkman said of the report. «The person who was going out and purporting to represent us was not connected with our company.”