According to Treasure DAO lead contributor John Patten, the DAO has been burning $8.3 million annually, but the new procedures are meant to save expenses.
Decentralized video game ecosystem Treasure DAO is restructuring as “a matter of survival” to extend its financial runway to at least February 2026.
Treasure DAO’s chief contributor John Patten says in an April 2 video posted to X that he has resumed a leadership role and is taking a plan to the DAO to streamline operations, eliminate unnecessary costs, and center the organization around a few key projects.
“I will introduce this after all of you provide your opinions at this time. I have my own thoughts, but we must make this decision as a community through long deliberation. The best ideas need to rise to the surface,” he said.
The Next Chapter of Treasure ✨
We’re releasing an official statement on our pivotal transition, outlining the rationale behind leadership changes, financial restructuring, and our bold new strategic direction.
Full details 👇 pic.twitter.com/BjWgZxc98l
— Treasure (@Treasure_DAO) April 2, 2025
As part of cost-cutting to reduce Treasure DAO’s annual burn rate of $8.3 million, Patten says 15 contributors have either left or been laid off, and game publishing support and the treasure chain will be terminated.
At the same time, he is proposing to withdraw an idle $785,000 from the market maker Flowdesk to increase the DAO’s treasury.
Patten says that, with the current runway, “stablecoins will last until roughly December,” but if the DAO approves withdrawing the funds from Flowdesk, this could be extended to February 2026, in “an optimistic scenario.”
The DAO’s current treasury only has $2.4 million left, and the ecosystem fund holds 22.3 million MAGIC, valued at $2.3 million, according to Patten, but if “Magic falls,” the DAO is “unsustainable sometime between December and February.”
Patten says the DAO also needs to focus its energy on a few key products and future partnerships will be based on revenue generation for the DAO, where users of the platform will need to generate value through token use.
“The DAO should officially commit to a focused, streamlined approach of four products and four products only, the marketplace, Bridgeworld, Smolworld and AI agent, scaling technology,” he said.
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“That’s all that Treasure should be through 2025. Bridgeworld and Smolworld will be use cases to demonstrate how other projects utilize magic marketplace and our AI framework and back end to run many, many agents concurrently.”
TreasureDAO, launched in 2021, offered services to provide game publishers access to infrastructure and advisory services to launch Web3-based games.
However, Patten says it “didn’t have a scalable business model” and hasn’t grown since the Arbitrum airdrop in March 2023.
The Treasure ecosystem token MAGIC is down 16.5% to $0.0872 for the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Overall, the token has shed 98% after hitting its all-time high of $6.32 on Feb. 19, 2022.
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Garantex is a Russian crypto exchange that was sanctioned and shut down in early March after purportedly helping money-laundering efforts. At the time, Tether — the leading stablecoin operator and issuer of USDt — froze $27 million in USDt on the platform, forcing it to halt operations.
The platform has reportedly shifted millions of dollars as it sought to reboot under its new brand, “Grinex.”
In mid-March, officials with India’s Central Bureau of Investigation announced the arrest of Lithuanian national Aleksej Bešciokov, who was alleged to have operated the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex.
The arrest of the alleged Garantex founder was based on US charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business and conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
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