Treasure DAO: Decentralized App-Chain for the Metaverse
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In 2021, NFTs rose to become a huge sector within the crypto space. Since then crypto gaming has gained significant traction, with buzzwords like “metaverse” and “P2E” (Play to Earn) catching serious engagement. Whether you are bullish on the potential of crypto gaming or not, the sector has experienced huge growth, seeing billions in inflows as projects aim to develop valuable products to attract new users. Treasure DAO plans to facilitate the metaverse boom by providing an NFT marketplace, AMM and more interconnecting infrastructure for people to build upon, all on top of Arbitrum.
This week’s episode of The Blockcrunch Podcast welcomes builders of the Treasure DAO project. Jason Choi, the host of the podcast is joined by co-founder John Patten and Karel Vuong, who oversees operations.
Read our notes to get an understanding of what Treasure DAO is, the power of community-driven content, the future of decentralized game infrastructure, and more.
What is Treasure DAO?
John Patten:
● Focused on becoming a decentralized video game publisher/platform.
● Use tokens and shared resources to create the underpinning infrastructure, both at the DeFi and gaming level.
● Views the project as a large cross-game economy.
● The primary token of the ecosystem is called $MAGIC, it can be earned by participating in Bridgeworld and is used to interact with and govern the Treasure ecosystem.
● As more games and builders incorporate it, the games and communities can become aligned with all the interoperable resources, and then share this larger network, which is permissionless.
● The aligned incentives and the cross-game infrastructure allows the community to grow.
● All the royalties earned by the organization get reinvested into new builders and new projects.
● The flywheel of decentralization allowed the project to go from being a Loot derivative to now having an in-house game studio.
● In a nutshell, the goal is to create simple and meaningful experiences for builders.
● Stresses the ethos of community-owned gaming, they have ownership over the IP and the infrastructure.
● The project started off as a free mint, with no idea where it would go.
Karel Vuong:
Think of the project as an ecosystem stack consisting of three layers:
· The cartridges: These are the games that are either built in-house or by the ecosystem builders.
· The community: This is the social layer, comprising of all the players and the contributors.
· The infrastructure: The shared economy that backs $MAGIC, and the tooling and resources that enable the games and the community built around them.
The Power of Community-Driven Content
John Patten:
● NFTs and the metaverse have allowed the community to become active participants in building the product, instead of just passively consuming it.
● Communities come to consensus on what exists, and leverage crypto networks to codify elements of the narrative.
● Treasure DAO approaches this from a resources POV, wherein the thesis is that the crypto communities will interact over resources.
Karel Vuong:
● Echoed what John said and stated how what they do at Treasure DAO is very community driven and community led.
● Different initiatives around lore, storytelling, and art help further the community growth.
Was Treasure DAO Inspired by Loot?
Loot is a medieval-themed NFT collection where each NFT includes a list of items that people can build narratives and stores around as they please.
John Patten:
● Whole ethos of Treasure DAO was based on Loot, initially imagined to become a complementary set to Loot.
● Felt it was a cool way to get the community working, and create an online world together.
● $MAGIC was supposed to be the in-game token for Loot, but the Loot community decided to go a different route.
● Pivoted, and focused on building a platform wherein other builders can come in and build.
Benefits of the Treasure Ecosystem for Game Developers
John Patten:
● Moved out of the era of individual P2E games that are isolated from everyone else.
● In the context of DeFi, it is much better to be a node in a larger network, than to be the network yourself.
● As a builder, if you decide to associate with $MAGIC and become a part of the ecosystem, you become a piece of an interconnected community.
● This helps the game devs achieve a community straightaway.
● The cross-game infrastructure allows to cross-promote games.
● The games share resources and economic loops.
● On-chain code is permissionless and available for anyone to hook into, and build upon.
Karel Vuong:
● Builders will be able to tap into an existing player base of crypto native people.
● Working with novel crypto gaming applications with the broader ecosystem.
● Have given thought to ensure that long-term incentives align with the builders in the ecosystem.
Decentralized Game Infrastructure Impact on NFT Industry
John Patten:
● Have to decide between building visual (e.g. Unity) or the underlying infrastructure, the economic infrastructure.
● There are a lot of neat things that can be done at the infrastructure level that will be crucial for all of the crypto games.
● Believes that the NFT market will see a radical shift, wherein we’ll move from flippers dominating NFTs, to people paying an input cost to consume a service.
Karel Vuong:
● Believes in moving the needle forward and shaping by creating the base layer.
● Deploys careful balance and thought in deciding what to build and spend time on.
● Parallel focus on building their IP and providing support to their builders and community.
About Bridgeworld Metaverse & Integrated Games
John Patten:
● Consists of characters called Legions, their main goal is to acquire $MAGIC because it powers their world.
● The Legions quest for treasures and then use those treasures to craft ways to earn $MAGIC, and then summon more Legions.
● Initially, users could stake their Legion to earn $MAGIC, now they’ve moved to quests as a means for earning $MAGIC.
● They’ve introduced the concept of harvesters, which can be thought of as large staking pools that have to be activated by a large group of people.
● Guilds and groups of people have to cooperate to craft Harvester parts, and then divert $MAGIC emissions to their Legions.
● Soon, players will be able to harvest corruption points, and be able to take over other people’s harvesters or weaken them.
● Harvesters can be other games, either inside or outside of the Treasure ecosystem.
Sustainability of the Ecosystem
John Patten:
● $MAGIC is used as an onboarding token, to play the games and interact with the ecosystem.
● Each new participant is less and less of a speculator and more of a player.
● The players want to contribute to the narrative and aren’t hoping for returns.
● Early $MAGIC farmers were helping bootstrap this network that is capable of building a comprehensive product suite.
● Want to move to productive use of $MAGIC, instead of the staking game.
● The core community understands the long-term vision and the infrastructure play.
Karel Vuong:
● A lot of gamers and guilds that want to accumulate $MAGIC is for productive uses.
Games Being Built on Top of $MAGIC
Karel Vuong:
● Had an initial cohort of 7 external games that are building within the Treasure ecosystem and leveraging $MAGIC.
● Most of them are genre agnostic games, including an ideal strategy game, a deck builder, a 3D MMORPG, and party games.
Why Are Game Developers Building on Top of $MAGIC?
John Patten:
● States the importance of the community that has already been built.
● Folks building in isolation, their communities ask to become part of Treasure and incorporate $MAGIC.
● The founding team extracts as little value as possible from the ecosystem.
● A great solution for indie game devs, as they don’t want to be exploited by centralized game publishers.
Long-Term Use Case of $MAGIC
John Patten:
● From a player perspective, to be a part of this ecosystem, the users will need $MAGIC.
● It is a single token that the users will use across the entire network.
● WIll serve as a unit of account within the in-game economy.
Jason Choi:
● Drew a parallel to $ETH, in that it is the token most DeFi applications pair liquidity of their token against it, all of them are building on Ethereum, a lot of them accrue $ETH in their treasury, and that is what Treasure DAO is looking to build with $MAGIC within the crypto gaming space.
Building a Treasure DAO App-Chain on AnyTrust
John Patten:
● Reiterates their great relationship with the Arbitrum team.
● Similar to cosmos, AnyTrust allows protocols to have an app-specific chain on Arbitrum.
● The benefit of the cosmos model is self-sovereignty, where very hyper-focused chains can be built.
● Helps with network congestion.
Why Is Now the Most Exciting Time to Be Part of the Treasure Ecosystem?
John Patten:
● Compares the current NFT/metaverse landscape to DeFi and the adoption of DeFi.
● This is the future of interoperability and composability, and a truly web3 approach to structuring organizations and building new products.
● Feels the industry is underfunded, but we will still see hockey stick growth.
Karel Vuong:
● Spoke about the early signs of traction, and how Treasure is dominating the NFT volume on Arbitrum.
Important Links
Watch the Original Episode Here
Follow Jason Choi, host of the Blockcrunch Podcast