A Detailed Explanation of Creating the Phenomenal Game The Beacon's TreasureDAO

Original Author: Wuhai, PANews

Recently, a game called The Beacon on the Arbitrum chain has suddenly gained popularity, sparking extensive discussions across various communities and social media. According to data panels on Dune, as of December 6, 20,027 players have entered The Beacon, with the number of purchases for the in-game genesis character NFTs reaching 34,394 (each genesis character costs 0.031 E).

This is notable considering the game has only been live for 9 days and the official team has not conducted any promotional activities. In contrast, many blockchain games that have raised tens of millions of dollars in funding currently see their NFT floor prices peak at launch. Some even fail to sell out their limited edition of 10,000 NFTs by the end of public sales.

The Beacon is incubated by TreasureDAO. Data from Dune shows that the daily active users in the Treasure ecosystem have increased from around 1,500 to about 6,000, with new users growing at an average rate of 2,000 per day. A series of characters and equipment generated within the game are priced in TreasureDAO's token MAGIC, and market confidence and expectations for MAGIC have increased, with the token rising 200% from its relative bottom.

In this article, PANews will provide a detailed explanation of the origins, economic model, community, ecological projects, and future development of TreasureDAO.

Origins of the Loot Ecosystem

Many community users may remember that in August 2021, a black-and-white NFT text file consisting of 8 phrases, which players could freely interpret, swept through the crypto space. It was called Loot, capturing nearly all attention in the market at that time, with its floor price skyrocketing from freemint to 20 ETH. Subsequently, numerous derivative projects and clones of Loot emerged, but over time, most of these projects gradually faded from the market due to a lack of development progress or pessimistic development outlooks.

However, one derivative project named Treasure stood out, continuously making new progress. Treasure is a decentralized NFT ecosystem built specifically for metaverse projects, aiming to guide the community in constructing a new, decentralized metaverse.

Launched by the community in September 2021, Treasure was community-driven and fairly launched. Every item in the Treasure ecosystem (Legions NFT, MAGIC Token, etc.) is distributed for free, and other collectibles in the Treasure market are also distributed fairly and for free. Initially built on the Ethereum mainnet, Treasure later migrated to the L2 layer Arbitrum chain to reduce user entry barriers due to high gas costs on the Ethereum network at that time.

MAGIC is the native token of Treasure and is the sole currency for transactions in the Treasure market. Each community within the Treasure ecosystem constructs its own narrative around the MAGIC token, linking narrative and economic ecology through MAGIC, which also serves as the reserve currency connecting the entire Treasure ecosystem. Treasure DAO uses the proceeds from the release of MAGIC tokens to develop new projects and continue supporting more mature ones.

TreasureDAO is managed by holders who stake MAGIC, responsible for overseeing the project. DAO votes determine which projects to join, the allocation of MAGIC tokens, and the sharing of market and protocol revenues.

On December 23, 2021, Treasure DAO voted to approve a strategic partnership with 1kx. Treasure officially announced a $3 million funding round led by 1kx, with participation from gaming guild Merit Circle, gaming organization AcadArena, and Ready Player DAO, among others. Axie Infinity co-founder Jiho also participated in the investment.

On September 16, 2022, Treasure DAO initiated a proposal to sell $3.5 million worth of ecological tokens MAGIC. This token sale was led by Digital Strategies Guild, with participation from 1kx, Neon DAO, ID Theory, and new participants such as Arbitrum, IOSG, and Alchemy Ventures. The proposal stipulated that participating institutions could purchase MAGIC at a price of $0.23, with a one-year lock-up period followed by a two-year release. This proposal was approved by community vote.

Community Contributors Build Teams

The vast majority of Treasure's team members come directly from the community. TreasureDAO has established a framework that allows the community to build alongside the team and earn rewards through MAGIC tokens for developing various key parts of the ecosystem. These incentives promote the construction of a broader ecosystem and encourage other communities to build on Treasure.

According to information from the Treasure official website, there are currently 29 members participating in the construction of Treasure. Among them, 17 members are responsible for products, while 10 members handle branding, marketing, and art. John Patten is the co-founder and CEO, previously serving as the head of growth at Osmosis. Gaarp is the co-founder responsible for growth.

It is worth mentioning that on February 23, 2022, one of the community members contributing to the ecosystem was exposed for initiating or participating in numerous rug-pull NFT projects. The complex backgrounds of community members are difficult to avoid in DAO organizations, but the main affairs of the team are decided by the DAO, making it hard for the participating projects themselves to have a serious negative impact. However, as a DAO organization, it is necessary to conduct thorough due diligence when absorbing team members. Additionally, team members can be publicly disclosed to allow for broader community participation in supervision and due diligence.

Economic Model

Treasure's token is MAGIC, with a total supply of approximately 350 million tokens. Its issuance mimics Bitcoin's halving, but MAGIC's halving occurs once a year rather than once every four years. Of the released tokens, 33% are allocated for Treasure farming, 25% for mining, 17% for incentivizing staking and liquidity providers, 15% as an ecological fund, and 10% for team building.

According to the output model of MAGIC, the MAGIC token will be fully released within 12 years after its launch. According to blockchain explorer data, the current circulating supply of MAGIC tokens is 254 million, with 260,000 holding addresses. Based on the price of $0.5535 at the time of writing, its circulating market cap is $140 million, and the fully diluted market cap is $193 million.

According to the design of the Treasure ecosystem, MAGIC can be understood as the parent currency for all projects within its ecosystem, with various community projects able to launch their own sub-tokens. Users can earn MAGIC tokens by playing games, mining, and participating in Bridgeworld (Bridgeworld is a strategic, trade, and domination game that is the center of the Treasure metaverse, detailed in the ecological section at the end of the article).

Treasure has NFT-ified liquidity pools within the ecosystem and integrated them into games, referring to them as crystals, holy grails, or other metaverse-related items. This is why some users may not even realize that the items they are using are actually LP tokens. The advantage of this approach is to guide users to deeply engage with the ecosystem, where the effort and time spent in obtaining item incentives make these items not just incentives but also collectibles with time value.

This mining process creates a positive cycle between MAGIC tokens and the Treasure ecosystem, turning liquidity pools into a PVP game battle. In this process, MAGIC tokens are continuously staked or deposited into liquidity pools, reducing the number of circulating tokens. As liquidity grows, its use cases and consensus also expand, becoming the foundation for building derivatives and financial products, thus integrating into DeFi products.

At the same time, the governance token of the Treasure ecosystem is no longer MAGIC, but rather NFTs derived from MAGIC tokens that serve as governance tokens. According to information from Treasure on the off-chain governance voting platform Snapshot, only MAGIC holders with Bridgeworld Atlas Mine, Harvesters, and MAGIC-ETH SLP can use gMAGIC to vote.

The design of the MAGIC mining portion creates high returns for users willing to lock their MAGIC tokens for the long term. These users play a key role in providing liquidity for the protocol, but this also puts the initial tokens in a high inflation mode. However, according to official information from Treasure, the initial high inflation of token releases was intentional to increase liquidity and create long-term sustainability.

MAGIC tokens are productive assets within the Treasure ecosystem that can capture ecological value. After the initial high inflation period, the subsequent release of tokens decreases, and if the Treasure ecosystem develops strongly, narrative expectations continue to enhance, and multiple narratives collectively increase its network effects, MAGIC tokens will become increasingly scarce.

It can be seen that Treasure's design avoids the vicious cycle of rough mining and selling seen in DeFi 1.0 and 2.0. According to Coinmarketcap data, as of December 5, the trading volume of MAGIC tokens in the past 24 hours was $7.5 million, with the main trading markets being decentralized exchange Sushiswap and centralized exchange OKX. Currently, the turnover rate and community consensus are also quite broad.

Ecological Project Introduction

The Treasure ecosystem has more than ten games and infrastructure-type projects. In this article, PANews will introduce several of the more important, interesting, and widely recognized projects.

Trove

Trove is an NFT marketplace built for the TreasureDAO ecosystem and the surrounding metaverse. Trove implements a user tiering experience system, where higher-level users can unlock different features and higher-level product customizations, including but not limited to profile or website personalization, decorations, etc.

Trove is associated with projects being built within the TreasureDAO ecosystem (games and infrastructure), and the interwoven gamified mechanisms will help attract more attention and interest, while rewards such as badges and achievement systems, leaderboards, EXP, and user levels enhance loyalty. Trove users holding Balancer Crystals (gamified MAGIC-ETH LP tokens) will be eligible for in-depth collectible-level data, including historical trading volume, floor price changes, collectible scores, etc.

The collectibles in the Trove marketplace are divided into Treasure collectibles and Generalized collectibles. Treasure collectibles include but are not limited to games and metaverse projects, priced in MAGIC. These projects are also integrated with MAGIC and the TreasureDAO ecosystem. Generalized collectibles can be any form of NFT collectibles, including but not limited to profile pictures (PFP), play-to-earn (P2E), virtual worlds, access passes, art, photography, music, etc. This portion of collectibles is currently priced in ETH, with minimal or no integration with MAGIC.

Generalized collectibles are currently manually selected by DAO committee members. According to official plans, Trove will eventually allow the listing of unlicensed collectibles and plans to open a multi-chain ecosystem in the future. A 2.5% fee generated from collectibles in the Trove marketplace goes to the DAO treasury. According to the blockchain data panel created by TreasureDAO on Dune, the total trading volume of the Trove marketplace has reached 11.3 million MAGIC. This means that TreasureDAO's current revenue is 2.82 million MAGIC.

Official website: https://trove.treasure.lol/

Magicswap

Magicswap is the decentralized exchange of the Treasure ecosystem, currently only featuring the trading pairs Magic/Gfly and Magic/ELM. Both of these projects are games supported by Treasure. The Magic/ELM liquidity pool has $548,000, with a trading volume of $60,000 in the past 24 hours; the Magic/Gfly liquidity pool has $554,000, with a trading volume of $63,000 in the past 24 hours.

Official website: https://magicswap.lol/

Bridgeworld

Bridgeworld is a strategic business, trade, and domination game that integrates many DeFi concepts while constructing a broader metaverse connected by resources and narratives, serving as the center of the Treasure metaverse.

Legions, Treasures, and other NFTs native to Bridgeworld play a key role in the first season of Bridgeworld, where players can stake their Legions, Treasures, and consumables to cultivate characters, build stories, and improve MAGIC mining efficiency. Specifically, players can dispatch Legions to summon more Legions, search for drops (such as Essences of Starlight, Treasures), use Treasures to craft consumables, and mine MAGIC.

Players can create Legions by using 10 MAGIC at the barracks, after which they can explore the Bridgeworld and Treasure ecosystem, earning experience and drop rewards during their exploration, which can be used to enhance their Legions. Legions can combine rewards accumulated through tasks into rare and valuable consumables at the Forge, aiding their exploration process. Players can also summon more Legions. It is important to note that the genesis Legions have a limited supply and come in various levels.

Harvesters in the Bridgeworld consume players' MAGIC, with the Atlas Mine being the main mine in Bridgeworld, where players can deposit MAGIC to mine it. The deposit period ranges from two weeks to a year, with the amount mined being proportional to the deposit time.

Bridgeworld incentivizes social coordination by forming guilds and sub-DAOs, implementing collective strategies around resource accumulation and optimization, including the onboarding of new players.

Official website: https://bridgeworld.treasure.lol/

Incubating Multiple Games

TreasureDAO has currently incubated over 10 games, including The Beacon, talesofelleria, toadstoolz, knightsoftheether, Realm, and others.

The most popular among them is The Beacon, which is a fantasy action game that incorporates Roughlite elements. Players can obtain characters for free or for a fee, then venture into dungeons or answer questions in taverns, both of which can yield items. Items dropped from paid characters can be sold for profit after their adventures.

According to a tweet from Gavin, a member of the TreasureDAO Chinese community, TalesofElleria is an RPG blockchain game that was originally built on the BNB chain but later migrated to Treasure; toadstoolzNFT combines community PFP and web games, with a higher entry barrier. Rlmverse is a territory game where users can explore and acquire new territories; BattleFlyGame is a key incubated project by TreasureDAO, having raised tens of millions of dollars from the community, though the product quality still needs refinement.

Conclusion

In summary, TreasureDAO has designed two main pathways. One is to become a decentralized game publishing platform, providing tools and resources for builders with ideas to help them construct, publish games, and achieve monetization. The second is to become the controlling entity of the economic ecology of games within the ecosystem, empowering all constructed games with MAGIC, using MAGIC as a flywheel to increase decentralization and develop decentralized economic primitives that can serve as "real-world" economic assets.

Currently, most platforms have fragmented data and assets, and even though blockchain-based products inherently have the advantage of composability, they still operate in silos, competing within existing stock. TreasureDAO's innovative model not only opens up the scalability and composability of in-game assets but also, due to its bottom-up construction approach, unlocks the composability of narratives across various projects. Players in the Treasure ecosystem can not only experience the utility of their owned assets across projects but also feel the interconnection of stories.

Additionally, TreasureDAO's governance is composed of a council formed by community tribes that obtain and hold different NFTs, each with its own culture and philosophy. This is a very interesting experiment for the use case of NFTs—using NFTs as a new norm for project governance. This aligns with what PANews previously mentioned in an article about the long-term development of blockchain game projects, advocating for refined governance through the NFT-ification of on-chain data, allowing community users who genuinely participate in the ecosystem to engage in governance rather than being completely controlled by capital giants.

According to TreasureDAO's plans, it hopes that Treasure can become a pillar product on the Arbitrum chain. It also views Arbitrum as a stop on a long-term and ambitious journey, considering the possibility of one day creating its own specific application chain using Cosmos SDK. At that time, holders of Legions and Treasures could act as validation nodes; most of MAGIC's liquidity would be connected to the AMM-specific chain of the Treasure chain through IBC.

The Treasure ecosystem focuses on games, with the ecosystem and games empowering each other in a positive cycle. In fact, Treasure adjusts the distribution of the economic system within the ecosystem through items like MAGIC, and this adjustment process itself is also a form of gameplay.