Treasure downsizes as co-founder proposes pivot to AI agents, ditching game publishing and the just-launched Treasure Chain

During recent weeks, co-founder and lead contributor at Treasure DAO John Patten has shocked the community with an overview of Treasure’s financial situation.

One outcome is that the DAO has sliced the size of its head count by about 15. It’s also seen co-founder Karel Voung step away. 

Taking things a step further however, Patten has now proposed that Treasure DAO completely restructures and pivots away from game publishing. This would comprise shutting down its entire game publishing stack as well as stopping all grants to partnering game developers immediately. Treasure’s zkSync-based gaming rollup Treasure Chain, which went live in December 2024, would also be scrapped. 

Patten claims that with its current burn rate, “Treasure as a game publisher and game platform would only last until July 2025”, adding that “by September, the treasury would be empty of USDC and liquid MAGIC. There would still be several millions of USD to pay out to game developers in debt for when they hit their milestones”.

As a way forward, Treasure must focus on no more than four streamlined core products for the rest of 2025, he argues. These include Treasure’s marketplace, its native game Bridgeworld, gaming IP Smolworld, and AI agent scaling technology.

Essentially, Bridgeworld and SMOL would serve as projects to showcase how Treasure’s MAGIC token, marketplace and AI agent framework can be utilised and scale, in the hope that other projects would follow suit.

“We must, pivot, pivot, and pivot again, until we find market fit. Smolworld is a billion dollar IP,” Patten adds.

Of course, not everyone is happy with this direction. One game officially announcing it’s leaving Treasure as a result is The Beacon. In a post on X, its co-founder and CEO Diego Vidaurre commented, “Treasure’s current vision no longer aligns with the goals we have for our game and ecosystem.” The game will remain on Arbitum, the ecosystem it previously was building on before Treasure migrated to zkSync.