INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The sudden rise and fall of Dough Finance In July 2024, Dough Finance, a Florida-based DeFi platform promising
The exploit not only wiped out investor funds but also brought operations to a halt.Chase Herro and Zak Folkman founded Dough Finance in
The platform attracted investors by offering high-risk DeFi strategies such as looping, a process where traders reuse borrowed crypto
This deposit acts as collateral
Then the trader borrows another crypto asset, often a stablecoin, based on the collateral value.Next, the trader takes the borrowed crypto
and buys more of the original asset
The cycle repeats with more depositing and borrowing; this is the looping process.The goal is to gain more exposure to the original asset
If the price increases, the trader makes more profit than they would with their initial deposit.However, it all came apart with a flash loan
Hackers targeting the DeFi protocol manipulated the smart contract and got away with about $2.5 million worth of cryptocurrencies.The
Investor Jonathan?Lopez, who deposited $1?million based on encouragement from co?founder Chase?Herro, saw his savings evaporate
He was reportedly advised step-by-step through the looping strategy just before the hack struck.Despite promises to compensate users via
proprietary tokens convertible back to Ether (ETH), only $281,000 was ever recovered
Communications had gone silent by August 2024, and by May 2025, Lopez had filed a fraud lawsuit against Herro
His court date is set for Florida in April 2026.This case spotlights a growing trend: Users are increasingly seeking legal recourse for
failed crypto platforms once unofficial assurances fall apart
Relaunch under a new banner: The birth of World Liberty Financial Barely two months post?collapse, Herro and
partner Zak Folkman relaunched under a new banner, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), debuting in September 2024.Their new DeFi platform
quickly drew headlines thanks to high-profile backers: US President Donald Trump and his sons
The partnership reportedly took shape through Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and US special envoy to the Middle East, who
facilitated the connection between the embattled founders and the Trump camp.Flush with fresh capital, the project embarked on a buying
It was the money flow.Following two token sales, including a blockbuster round in March 2025, the platform claimed to have raised $550
Yet the revenue split was anything but decentralized: 75% of all net protocol revenue was routed to DT Marks DEFI, a Trump-linked entity
The remaining 25% went to a company owned by Herro and Folkman.In real terms, the Trump family reportedly pocketed $400 million, while the
once-disgraced Dough Finance founders walked away with at least $65 million, a dramatic reversal of fortune for a pair who had lost $2.5
million just a year earlier.Critics were quick to call out the irony: a platform that markets itself as decentralized but operates under an
intensely centralized structure
launched a memecoin called Official Trump (TRUMP) on Solana earlier this year, followed shortly by Official Melania Meme (MELANIA), a
similar token released by the First Lady
Meanwhile, Eric Trump co-founded a cryptocurrency mining company called American Bitcoin, with Donald Trump Jr
Most recently, Trump Media and Technology Group filed a proposal with the US SEC on June 5, 2025, to launch a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded
fund (ETF), the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF.Together, these ventures form an increasingly blurred line between politics, personal enrichment
and crypto, a line that Herro and Folkman have now positioned themselves squarely within
allowing users to exchange those tokens for additional recovered funds in the future.The platform also credited Seal 911, a cybersecurity
firm, for incident response support and emphasized transparency moving forward.However, affected users say none of these promises
The governance vote was never held, Dough tokens were never listed or usable, and no additional funds were recovered beyond an initial
partial reimbursement of around $281,000
co-founder Herro of misrepresentation, securities fraud and breach of fiduciary duty
The case, set for trial in April 2026, could help define how courts handle DeFi founders who directly guide investors through high-risk
If Dough Finance operated without one, it may face regulatory scrutiny as an unlicensed money services business
fraud and unregistered securities cases, suggesting this may only be the beginning.This pattern of vanishing communications, vaporware
tokens and silent pivots has drawn comparisons to previous DeFi collapses like SafeMoon and BitConnect
Is World Liberty Financial really safe? After raising $550 million and tying itself to the Trump name, WLFI might
look like a powerful DeFi success story
signs are familiar.At Dough Finance, users were promised cutting-edge DeFi strategies and post-hack reimbursements
What they got instead was silence, missing funds and vaporware tokens
Today, with fraud allegations still active, the same founders now control a new platform with even more capital, more complexity and more
political weight.WLFI uses a non-transferable governance token (WLFI), offers little user control over treasury allocation and funnels 75%
of protocol revenue to a Trump-linked LLC
If the past is any guide, this project warrants close scrutiny, not blind trust.
