Trump-backed World Liberty Financial and Ethena eye collaboration starting with sUSDe implementation

World Liberty Financial, the fledgling DeFi project supported by President-elect Donald Trump, continues to make inroads with well-established crypto firms — this time with a collaboration with Ethena Labs. 

The two firms said on Wednesday that they are looking at "long-term collaboration," which will kick off with an implementation of Ethena's yield-bearing token, sUSDe.

"As a first step in the collaboration, Ethena and WLFI will explore the potential implementation of sUSDe as the first new token available as collateral on the WLFI protocol, backed by Aave," according to a statement. "Introducing sUSDe into WLFI’s forthcoming Aave instance ... would enable the instance to benefit from the large TVL and user base of Ethena."

World Liberty Financial's governance will be asked to decide on the measure this week.

"In the unlikely event that the WLFI Aave instance is not approved by governance, or sUSDe is not approved as a collateral asset, WLFI and Ethena would continue to explore opportunities to collaborate with the full intention of finding points of integration," the two firms told The Block.

The DeFi platform appears to be gaining steam since the former president was elected to return to the White House in November. At the end of last month, World Liberty Financial appointed Tron founder Justin Sun as an advisor. That move followed HTX, the crypto exchange linked to Sun, investing $30 million in World Liberty.

"sUSDe has seen strong growth in the Aave markets since its onboarding to Aave Core and Aave’s Lido instance in mid-November, reaching ~$1.2 billion in supplied assets in under a month," World Liberty Financial and Ethena said in their statement. "The integration would also help simultaneously increase stablecoin deposits in the instance, driven by sUSDe’s popularity as a collateral asset to borrow stablecoins like USDC and USDT."

Wednesday's announcement comes on the heels of World Liberty Financial acquiring $600,000 of ENA, according to the statement. The purchase of ENA tokens "is not directly connected to the collaboration [but is] indicative of WLFI’s belief in the long-term viability and success of the Ethena network," World Liberty Financial co-founder Chase Herro told The Block.

“Collaborating with Ethena Labs brings us one step closer to democratizing access to financial tools that deliver better experiences, and greater accessibility for users around the world," World Liberty Financial co-founder Zak Folkman said in the statement.

World Liberty Financial is a decentralized lending platform launched in September, and its public token sale began in October. It has been perhaps Trump's largest foray into the crypto, an industry he was once critical of. The incoming U.S. president has not only aligned himself with crypto interests in recent months but has also signaled he would reduce regulation of the digital assets sector.