Thinking about TreasureDAO from first principles: The coordinating layer that dominates the economic nature of ecological games

Author: Young, Folius Ventures

Original Title: 《6 points: A Thesis for TreasureDAO》

Translated by: Hu Tao, Chain Catcher

TreasureDAO was originally launched as a derivative of the Loot project in August last year. As the community began to grow and layers of contributors started to form, TreasureDAO launched the MAGIC token in September and began to outline its roadmap for the future.

TreasureDAO can be viewed through two mental models: first, as a decentralized game publishing platform, the Treasure ecosystem provides developers with tools and resources to build, publish, and monetize games in the form of Web3.0. Secondly, as a layer of economic control for other games, which may outsource the heavy lifting of economic management to TreasureDAO. The project started on Ethereum but is now located on Arbitrum after migrating last October.

Let’s think about TreasureDAO from first principles and the role it plays in the future of Web3.0 gaming.

Driven by token incentives, some form of interoperability at the game level will inevitably emerge in the coming years, requiring a central coordinating entity like TreasureDAO to facilitate this.

• The concept of digital fusion, where media assets and in-game tools are shared among development teams creating the same type of fictional worlds, has always been a key business goal, but has never taken off in practice due to the differences in technology stacks used by different people. Game studios design games under the same "universe" but lack a unified drive to do so.

• Because the Treasure ecosystem is built from the ground up and revolves around a single MAGIC token, developers consider composability when building, much like LEGO blocks in DeFi, where smart contracts stack on top of each other.

• Studios can leverage each other's work, such as internal tools for designing skins, NPC algorithms, or knowledge from another game.

• Interoperability evolves from the code implementation layer to the game layer itself. This takes the following forms:

• Narrative overlap

• Media and rich content sharing

• Similarities in gameplay

• Transferability of asset utility

• Notably, because the game layer is not coded, composability cannot be computationally guaranteed; rather, it is ensured by a central entity like TreasureDAO that drives this narrative forward.

The foundation of this interoperability is the need for a Web3.0 native game distributor that specializes in managing the game economic layer, which Treasure can fulfill.

• Traditional game retailers like Microsoft Store/GOG take about 30% of sales revenue from game studios, merely for hosting data on servers and providing a platform to connect games to players.

• Small teams and independent developers need distribution agreements the most—over 55% of games released on Steam are indie games. Web3.0 distributors may provide services for managing token economies and the heavy lifting of bringing players into the crypto space.

• Under the management of TreasureDAO, game developers do not have to worry about capital flight, excessive rent-seeking, trading token exchange rate depreciation, interest rate parameter optimization, etc., and can instead focus on world/community building.

• Multiple games integrating MAGIC are already in development: Life (MMO), BattleFly (PVP), Peek-A-Boo! (a battleship game with its own token).

• This capture positions TreasureDAO to lead as a Web3.0 game storefront similar to Steam or Nintendo.

TreasureDAO does not gamify finance; rather, it is a game of finance itself, a unique premise.

• While some games gamify the process of interacting with DeFi (see DeFiland) or governance and contributions (i.e., completing tasks in-game or voting to advance), no game has yet successfully gamified the distribution of liquidity and yield itself. Treasure's main game, Bridgeworld, is essentially designed for participants or groups of participants (guilds) to fight for the "winning" release of MAGIC.

• This is different from rewarding people through obtaining rewards for completing daily tasks in a PvE environment or winning in-game items in a PvP environment. In Treasure, fighting for the control of MAGIC releases, much like fighting for Curve releases, is the game itself.

• Much of Treasure's narrative revolves around this idea, with its founders suggesting using liquidity as an input to influence game weather or game time, and using liquidity as a means of spatial exploration (LP token unlocking maps).

• This concept has proven attractive, with over 23,000 Discord members on TreasureDAO and at least 7 guilds actively developing.

Community-driven game development is the key flywheel for growth, and TreasureDAO can leverage this better than other projects.

• By working with the community, game designers can continuously iterate to find something interesting, engaging, or appealing to the community at a lower release cost.

• This is clearly reflected in TreasureDAO's recent update, which changed the visuals of the Genesis Legion (the rarest item in the game, which can no longer be minted). Many complained that they preferred the earlier visuals, causing the floor price to drop from around $14,000 to $11,500. The team worked to switch the visuals within days. The floor for the Genesis Legion is now 19,000 MAGIC.

• This positive feedback loop can only be leveraged when there is a central coordinating team pushing the project forward. In contrast, the Loot project lacks a central vision, token, and leadership to unify community members. There are interesting projects like Rings, but most are fragmented and moving in different directions.

• The difference in development speed and player growth is stark: Treasure launched shortly after Loot and already has 10 games built on the Treasure ecosystem. So far, Loot's development activity has been limited to JPEG derivatives and visualizations. There are currently no live tasks (i.e., games).

TreasureDAO owns/develops a suite of NFT/DeFi products and services to ensure they can quickly pivot to alternative business directions.

• Treasure's marketplace had a trading volume of about $110 million around January, compared to $79.2 million on OpenSea Polygon.

• At a rate of 2.5% for TreasureDAO, this translates to an annual revenue of $33 million, which is a conservative estimate.

• The Treasure team is preparing to launch Trove in a few weeks, a universal marketplace where NFTs are paired in ETH rather than MAGIC. With a sufficiently strong brand and mind capture in the NFT community, Treasure is unlikely to become the dominant marketplace on Arbitrum, and this growth should be accounted for in costs.

• With proper capital management, Treasure can develop a venture capital financing department or act as a SPAC to acquire other games and their in-game assets.

The ultimate state of TreasureDAO may be a trusted neutral virtual world that dominates the economics of other games. In a sense, it becomes the "god layer" of the games built upon it, determining weather conditions, allocating resources (drops) to players, and the pseudo-randomness of enemy strength and their attacks through a combination of hard-coded algorithms or community inputs.
Related Reading:
《What is the recently popular Loot derivative project Treasure (MAGIC)?》
《Understanding Loot, the NFT paradigm shift in progress》