Tron founder Justin Sun has escalated his lawsuit against Trump family-linked World Liberty Financial, casting a fight over about $45 million and roughly 4 billion frozen WLFI tokens as a test of permissionless ownership. After U.S. District Judge James Donato on August 20 kept Sun’s individual claims in open court and rejected a bid for confidential arbitration, Sun said the project secretly embedded and then used smart-contract freeze powers against him days after trading began on September 1, 2025. He seeks hundreds of millions in damages for alleged fraud, wrongful freezing, and breach of contract; World Liberty denies the claims, says freeze functions were disclosed, and filed a Florida defamation countersuit. Sun has also raised concerns about controls in the project’s USD1 stablecoin and reported circular lending as WLFI has lost nearly 80% since launch.