Treasure makes major cuts in last-ditch effort to stay afloat
Treasure only has about 10 months of runway left, and is slashing quarterly spend from roughly $11.3 million to $1.2 million
Treasure DAO and Arroyan Art/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
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Treasure DAO is leaving gaming.
The once-gaming-focused Treasure DAO has killed its gaming publishing platform and entire blockchain, accompanied by a round of layoffs. Several key leaders have also recently left the DAO.
Financial troubles? Yep.
Treasure cofounder John Patten told me in a DM: “We’re good. We have runway. Leaner team now.”
Before its layoffs, Treasure’s annual burn was the following, according to the team:
- $8.3M in “general treasury usage”
- $816K in “Bridgeworld” usage
But a Treasure financial transparency report shows that the DAO saw over $11.3 million in quarterly expenses in Q4 last year alone, with just $40,000 in quarterly revenue.
They had funds to last until July 2025 in their previous state, according to the team. Now, they have $2.4 million in stablecoin runway, as well as 22.3 million MAGIC (which is worth about $1.56 million at the time of writing).
The team is also trying to pull about $786,000 in stablecoins, BTC and ETH off market maker Flowdesk to add what Patten says is an additional two months of runway ($393,000 a month). If able to withdraw and swap that MAGIC at current prices, they would have a total of $4.746 million.
But if Treasure is able to get by on roughly $393,000 a month like Patten suggested, Treasure could continue on for about 10 to 12 months. That’s assuming the price of MAGIC does not fall further before they sell it or the team swaps their MAGIC into stablecoins.
We know they had $74 million in crypto in mid-2023, according to a financial transparency report from the DAO. Their token launched in November 2021, and the team had raised $6.5 million in funding across two seed rounds in 2021 and 2022.
“We spent too long trying to win a prize not even worth fighting for,” Patten said in a video.
At one point, more than 40 people were working for Treasure. We know at least 15 have been laid off or left. Now, their gaming distribution plans are cancelled and they’re pivoting to AI.
“We are aggressively sunsetting the entire game publishing stack and helping partners unwind their integrations. The DAO had no option but to eliminate publishing support as quickly as possible,” Patten said.
Some games have begun leaving Treasure as a result of the shakeup. The Beacon game team said that Treasure’s current vision “no longer aligns with the goals we have for our game and ecosystem. For this and other reasons, we have decided to fully depart from their ecosystem.”
“The pivot away from game publishing was not a choice. It was a matter of survival,” Patten explained.
Notably, I interviewed Patten and Treasure cofounder Karel Vuong in February, and there was no mention of Treasure’s financial troubles at the time. Since then, Vuong has left Treasure.
I’ve heard rumors that Treasure’s financial issues may have been obvious to some community members since October — or perhaps even earlier than that.
During that February interview, though, Vuong said the team wanted to focus on crypto-forward indie games.
Now, gaming for Treasure is a thing of the past.
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