Treasure DAO is slashing expenses, dissolving programs, and narrowing its product scope in a high-stakes effort to survive a mounting financial crisis. The organization’s chief contributor, John Patten, returned to leadership after discovering that the DAO’s treasury would be empty of liquid assets by September without urgent intervention.
In a video released April 2, Patten disclosed that Treasure DAO was burning $8.3 million annually, with just $2.4 million left in stablecoins.
If no action were taken, the organization’s stablecoin runway would end by December. With community approval, withdrawing $785,000 in idle assets from market maker Flowdesk could extend operations through February 2026.
Cuts and Closures Begin
Fifteen contributors have exited the organization. Game publishing support has been discontinued. The Treasure Chain, which costs $450,000 per year, will be retired. “We are aggressively sunsetting the entire game publishing stack,” Patten said. Partner grants have also been canceled, with remaining obligations estimated between $800,000 and $1 million.
Labor costs reached $6.1 million annually, while infrastructure accounted for another $800,000. The DAO had nearly 40 team members before the layoffs. Grants denominated in USD but paid out in MAGIC tokens further strained the treasury as the token’s value declined. The DAO’s token, MAGIC, has fallen 98% since its 2022 peak.
Flowdesk currently holds $1.49 million in assets for the DAO, but only $785,000 of it is liquid and inactive. A proposal to reclaim those funds is expected. The Eco Fund contains 22.3 million MAGIC tokens, currently worth $2.3 million.
Strategic Refocus on Core Products
Patten has proposed a narrow focus on four products: Marketplace, Bridgeworld, Small World, and AI agent scaling technology. “That’s all that Treasure should be through 2025,” he said. Bridgeworld and Smalls will act as demonstration-use cases for the DAO’s token, backend, and AI systems.
The Small Brains project ran on a $200,000 annual budget, while Small World received only $25,000. Both, Patten said, were cost-effective and showed promise. The DAO’s AI framework, originally developed for Small World, supports Neurochimp agents that can trade on-chain, use Web3 wallets, and interact with Unity clients. These agents now operate fully on MAGIC, removing reliance on external APIs.
Patten emphasized that future partnerships must be revenue-generating and tied directly to token usage. The grants program will be retired. “We gave away an incredible sum of MAGIC to communities that were not only automatic sellers,” he noted.
Retreating from general publishing, Treasure will rebuild around its proprietary products and marketplace. With MAGIC integrations under renewed discussion, Patten expressed cautious optimism. “We are pruning the garden to kill the weeds that were choking the life out of things that had actually been growing.”