Karel Vuong on how Treasure stands out in 2025

Within the newest episode of the Blockchain Gaming World podcast, editor-in-chief Jon Jordan talks to TreasureDAO co-founder Karel Vuong about how the “decentralized gaming console” ecosystem is totally different to different blockchain sport initiatives, in addition to its imaginative and prescient for 2025 as video games begin to go stay on its new ZKsync-based Treasure Chain.

BlockchainGamer.biz: Are you able to give us the background about the way you co-founded Treasure?

Karel Vuong: I went to highschool for pc science. I dropped out. I’ve at all times been immersed in wanting to construct stuff. I spent a bunch of time in startups and tech firms and made my manner from constructing merchandise to constructing firms. 

I used to be a part of a startup studio. We have been incubating concepts and corporations from the ground-up. We had some nice exits and that led me to the enterprise aspect of issues. I used to be in Canada, and being in Toronto, I spent a variety of time in Waterloo, which is the mecca of all issues know-how right here. 

A variety of the early crypto Ethereum of us went to highschool there so a part of that was being round them. However I didn’t dive into crypto full time in a significant manner. Round 2016, I used to be buying and selling on the aspect, taking all of the random programs that have been arising and simply hacking round in my spare time. It didn’t begin to merge with my skilled life till 2020 or 2021. 

On the enterprise agency, we have been beginning to take a look at it extra deeply. We have been making a bunch of crypto investments. This was in regards to the intersection of fintech and crypto, which segwayed into us beginning a digital belongings fund. So quick ahead, up till Treasure, it was actually me attempting to immerse myself in evenings and weekends. However I missed constructing and I needed to make this my full time factor. 

In September 2021, the Loot venture began, and out of that my co-founder John Patton began TreasureDAO. A part of the fantastic thing about Treasure was every thing was so community-centric. A variety of neighborhood members jumped onboard and began constructing. We fashioned a group and the remaining is historical past from there.

So no VCs. Simply neighborhood, then?

That was the inception level, proper? It was a full distribution to the neighborhood. And a part of it's you’re not promoting NFTs for cash. You’re not elevating capital from VCs. It was as much as the neighborhood to create worth, worth out of skinny air. That was a part of the imaginative and prescient.  

Loot began off with the constructing blocks for this fantasy world, based mostly round fantasy gear, eight phrases on a card. At the moment, there have been an entire bunch of different derivatives. For Treasure, we had began with the vantage level of ‘let’s create extra of the primitives or the commodities of this fantasy world’. It’s issues like gold and lumber and grain and all of the issues  that you'd must populate a world. 

The MAGIC token was conceived as a solution to function the cash to drive commerce throughout this metaverse that we’d be creating collectively. So we took these preliminary concepts and it led into this try of attempting to construct a world that had two video games or two IPs that concurrently might faucet into this economic system that was shared throughout them.

As anybody who’s completed something in gaming, that’s very exhausting. And on the similar time although, I feel the spirit of interoperability and connectedness has at all times been core. We've got at all times talked about this as being a decentralized sport console. It’s a decentralized Nintendo. If Ethereum is the world’s pc, what we’re constructing is one thing that tackles an analogous type of spirit. 

Over time, we noticed extra communities are available and combination. We've got many video games. We've got many shopper purposes and protocols. They usually’ve all self-selected and opted into this imaginative and prescient of making this sport console along with us.

How has the sport console idea labored out?

There may be the instant considered, ‘Do you guys have {hardware}?’ Once we launched our mainnet, we have been attempting to create the retro, nostalgic feeling of you opening your console on Christmas Day. That magic is highly effective, however it has led individuals to ask ‘The place is Treasure’s console?’.

However what we’re attempting to do is create the ethos as an entire, making it accessible in that method. After all, it’s just like Ethereum constructing a world pc. We wish to discuss one thing greater than the technical facets of blockchains and decentralization. Having the ability to transfer away from that into one thing extra imaginative. It’s about excited about the grand scheme of issues.

It’s additionally in regards to the video games trade, about what’s potential by way of the enterprise mannequin and the way studios are being fashioned and incubated and launched on this area, and the style through which the neighborhood is taking a entrance row seat in sport growth.

Treasure appears to have a robust indie focus.

I feel there’s a religious debate available as to what triple-A truly means versus what indie means. No-one on this area has triple-A budgets in the identical manner that conventional gaming has. However on the similar time, for us at Treasure, we're firmly within the camp of whether or not you wish to name it indie or not, it’s about blockchain video games and let’s embrace all the new issues that we are able to do by way of gameplay and possession. 

If you have a look at the Steam charts, there are actually titles you acknowledge and a variety of them are triple-A, however you even have the diamonds within the tough, the needles within the haystacks which might be exhausting to seek out, however they’re additionally altering how individuals take into consideration gaming. It’s one thing that’s vital for us to deal with and for the acceptance of blockchain gaming, it’s most likely not going to be one thing that appears like a triple-A sport. I feel it’s going to return from an indie sport.

Are you able to discuss by your choice to maneuver from Arbitrum and launch the Treasure Chain on ZKsync?

Once we began Treasure, we have been on Ethereum L1. Clearly that ended up manner too costly so we wanted to search for an L2. Arbitrum One was at the moment the one real looking candidate. A variety of L2s hadn’t launched mainnet and didn’t match the standards, so we ended up on Arbitrum. It was a wager that we made. Bear in mind, at the moment, Arbitrum was primarily DeFi. OpenSea didn’t help it. Again then, there was no solution to even have a look at an NFT that was on Arbitrum, proper? So we ended up spending two and a half years constructing there. 

Treasure being a DAO, it has a variety of shifting elements. There’s a variety of coordination, a variety of parts round that. Then Arbitrum decentralized as nicely. This led to a DAO squared scenario. We’re coordinating with the Treasure DAO and we now have to interact with the Arbitrum DAO. 

We needed to be good stewards inside Arbitrum and labored carefully with Offchain Labs, the core builders of Arbitrum, to see past DeFi, past what Arbitrum was usually identified for and show extra help, not only for Treasure, however for brand new studios coming in. A part of this was the conception of a gaming program that was allotted a fairly large chunk of change to help video games. 

Definitely, this was a irritating course of for Arbitrum delegates who weren’t immersed in video games. There was a variety of schooling, and a variety of attempting to push the ball up the hill. We did get the proposal to go however a part of the method bought us pondering ‘Is that this the proper place and tradition for Treasure?’

After which there’s a know-how query. This was what ultimately led us to maneuver to ZKsync. I imply it was a reasonably public course of. ZKsync gave us a proposal. Optimism proposed we launched on its Superchain and so forth. 

We have been simply on the lookout for the perfect technical setting. If we glance long-term the place that is all going, I feel ZKsync have made all the proper bets they usually’re on a very quick tempo. So we ended up launching on mainnet on ZKsync throughout December and it’s been tremendous thrilling. 

From the surface, the choice regarded very dramatic. 

It’s by no means going to be a cheerful second whenever you depart. I can see the place it got here from, however there’s no animosity. For us, we’re laser-focused on shoppers – ‘How will we make this the perfect setting for the eventual mass market?’ and I feel ZKsync is the perfect place for that.

What’s the imaginative and prescient for 2025?

The instant focus is bringing over three years of amassed historical past of initiatives, customers, liquidity and belongings, that’s over 200 million of tokens, to the brand new Treasure chain. This yr is about touchdown in our new house. 

Everyone seems to be impatient on this area. Everybody needs a sport yesterday, proper? However our studios and builders, they’ve been constructing for 2 or three years, which is barely any time in conventional sport growth cycles. Now these builders have the Treasure chain to launch their video games on – video games like The Beacon, Smolbound, Zeeverse. That’s all occurring this yr. A variety of these initiatives are launching their tokens. They’ve been working their manner by play testing and airdrop campaigns. 

All of it ties in with the infrastructure elements too, which is why we wanted our personal chain, as a result of now they are often deeply built-in with the Treasure Chain. I feel the AI agentic motion can also be a part of the story. 

For this reason we provide the Treasure Improvement Equipment, to deliver the blockchain straight into sport engines equivalent to Unity, Unreal, Godot by abstracting that have away. So you are taking it to the subsequent degree the place you might have extra of your sport onchain however it’s performant and it’s accessible and in addition enjoyable. That’s our plan to present builders these constructing blocks. 

The AI half is an effective instance of this. The imaginative and prescient began in 2023 however it was too early so in summer season 2024, we began to revisit a few of these early concepts equivalent to with the ability to construct a sport that could possibly be performed by brokers. We ended up getting in touch with Shaw from ElizaOS and making a proof of idea that’s based mostly round our authentic IP Smolbrains, that are like these monkeys that accumulate IQ over time and their heads get larger and greater. 

It’s the right IP that lent itself to being a testbed for this. We created one thing known as Smolworld. You may consider it like a Tamagotchi. You will have a small monkey companion and also you discuss by way of discuss or your mic and it’ll determine what to do. It’s bringing one thing to life however they're those making the choices. Possibly they received’t take heed to you half the time, however you even have fascinating emergent behaviors.

We additionally take into consideration the place it goes by way of scaling and making a framework that permits any sport developer to have the ability to do that, whether or not it’s creating an AI sport from the bottom up or constructing swarms of brokers which might be autonomous and embedding that into a part of your core expertise. 

How does Treasure stand out from all the opposite gaming initiatives?

It’s a lot simpler to construct a sport that interacts with the blockchain than it was two or three years in the past. When you might have the mixture of all these totally different items, I feel that’s the place you can also make one thing that’s differentiated. 

Recreation builders should make a variety of choices so for us it’s saying ‘Let’s take away 10 of these for you’ in addition to enabling them to have the ability to faucet into the community results of the neighborhood. Culturally, I feel this has a vibe. It’s extra cooperative inside Treasure than it's aggressive. 

That comes again to 2021, after we needed to make this a community-driven ecosystem. You’re not coming into a sequence the place you’re remoted, you’re simply doing it by yourself. You’re a part of one thing. 

And I feel that is how indie tradition stands out. Individuals who play indie video games are extra open. Triple-A is a extra aggressive setting however with indie video games, there’s extra openness. Individuals assume ‘I’m going to strive one thing new’. And when it’s superior, they assume ‘I can’t get this expertise anyplace else’.

Discover out extra about Treasure by way of its web site.

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