Tron’s Justin Sun sues Trump-linked World Liberty Financial over frozen assets

Tron creator Justin Sun sued World Liberty Financial, the stablecoin and crypto firm backed by members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s family, on Tuesday, alleging that the project had unfairly locked up his $WLFI holdings, made fraudulent misrepresentations, and threatened and defamed Sun.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday, which includes a line about Sun’s support for Trump himself, alleged that World Liberty’s leadership had engaged “in an illegal scheme to seize property” in the form of Sun’s tokens, which Sun alleged he had purchased after being solicited by the World Liberty team in 2024.

“At that pivotal time for World Liberty, Mr. Sun invested $45 million to purchase $WLFI tokens from World Liberty not only because of the project’s claims that it would promote adoption of decentralized finance — an issue Mr. Sun cares deeply about and to which he has devoted much of his life’s work — but also because of the Trump family’s association with the project,” the suit said.

A spokesperson for World Liberty Financial said they had no comment on the lawsuit.

World Liberty asked Sun to continue investing through 2025, including through a request to mint World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin, the filing said. “By July 2025, when it became clear that Mr. Sun would not invest or mint USD1 on their terms, World Liberty principals became hostile toward Mr. Sun.”

“World Liberty induced Plaintiffs to make their investments in World Liberty through fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions about the economic rights and liberties that would come with purchasing $WLFI tokens,” the filing said.

These allegedly fraudulent misrepresentations include statements about the rights of token holders, various public statements by World Liberty or its executives about the governance rights of token holders, and statements about “freedom to transact.”

Sun’s suit also alleged that World Liberty, despite presenting itself as a business operating in the decentralized finance sector, had centralized control over its tokens.

According to the complaint, World Liberty changed the smart contract governing $WLFI in August 2025 to add a “blacklisting” function that allowed the company to freeze tokens in specific wallets. The modification was not put to a governance vote or disclosed to investors, Sun alleges, even as token holders had just approved a proposal to make a portion of the supply tradable.

“While the upgrade is technically visible on the public blockchain, World Liberty buried it in the code without alerting token holders to its existence or implications,” the complaint states. “In the dark of night, the company thus created a ‘blacklisting’ function that it could wield at will.”

The complaint alleges that World Liberty’s freezing of Sun’s tokens served a dual purpose: pressuring him to mint $200 million of the company’s USD1 stablecoin on his Tron blockchain, and manipulating $WLFI’s market price by preventing one of the largest holders from selling.

By locking up Sun’s position, the complaint argues, World Liberty “artificially propped up the market price of $WLFI tokens held by World Liberty founders and the company’s corporate treasury.”

World Liberty’s ability to issue, freeze, and even reassign tokens may not just undercut its decentralization claims, but also raise regulatory questions. The filing argues that those powers could qualify the firm as a money transmitter under the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s rules, subjecting it to registration and anti-money laundering requirements.

Other allegations in the complaint include that “World Liberty made two overt threats” to Sun and his businesses. Chase Herro, one of World Liberty’s co-founders, allegedly threatened to burn Sun’s $WLFI tokens if Sun did not ask for his tokens to be burned.

“Second, Mr. Herro also falsely claimed that the know-your-customer (‘KYC’) documentation submitted by Mr. Sun and the Sun Companies in connection with their $WLFI token purchases was inadequate,” the filing said.

Herro threatened to report Sun to U.S. authorities, the suit alleged.

Chunks of the lawsuit were redacted. Another filing attached to the lawsuit cited a confidentiality provision, saying Sun’s team was giving the World Liberty team an opportunity to decide whether or not these redacted provisions should remain sealed.

In a post on X, Sun said he had “tried in good faith to resolve this situation.”

“All I want is to be treated the same as every other early investor who received tokens — no better, no worse,” he said.

“I also want the community to know that I strongly oppose the new governance proposal World Liberty published on April 15,” Sun said in his post.

Since Trump took office, Sun has visited the U.S. after previously staying away from the country. He was a guest at Trump’s first memecoin dinner (tied to a different Trump-linked crypto project) last year.

Sun settled charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month, agreeing to pay a $10 million fine to resolve a case brought by the previous presidential administration.