According to BroadChain, on April 12, Justin Sun, founder of Tron and actual controller of HTX, issued a public statement strongly condemning the Trump family project World Liberty Financial (WLFI) for embedding a "blacklist function" within its smart contract. He disclosed that his personally held WLFI tokens had been illegally blacklisted in 2025.
Sun stated that he has always been a staunch supporter of President Trump and his crypto-friendly policies. As an early supporter of WLFI, he invested significant capital during the project's initial stages, believing in the vision presented to the public: a DeFi platform promoting financial freedom, removing intermediaries, and bringing the benefits of decentralized finance to ordinary people.
However, the statement pointed out that what was never disclosed to any investor was that WLFI secretly embedded a backdoor blacklist function within the smart contract deploying the WLFI token. This function grants the company unilateral power to freeze, restrict, or even effectively confiscate the property rights of any token holder without notice, reason, or recourse.
"This is the opposite of decentralization. This is a trap disguised as a gateway," Sun stated.
The statement further indicated that the actions taken by the WLFI team—extracting fees from users, secretly implanting backdoors to control user assets, freezing investor funds without disclosure and due process, treating the crypto community as a personal ATM—all these actions were authorized without any fair, transparent, or good-faith community governance process.
Regarding the governance votes cited to legitimize the aforementioned actions, Sun emphasized that these votes were not conducted through fair or transparent procedures. Critical information was withheld from voters, substantive participation was restricted, and the outcomes were predetermined. "These votes do not represent the will of the community—they represent the will of those who designed them."
Sun concluded by stating: "These actions have nothing to do with me. They have nothing to do with the investors who believed in the project's promises. We oppose each and every one of the above actions in the strongest possible terms. The actions of the WLFI team are eroding community trust in the project. Unlock the tokens, maintain transparency with the community. Let us build with integrity, not misconduct."