Following the growth of blockchains built as secondary layers on top of another blockchain – L2 chains – more recently we’ve seen a significant uptick of L3 chains announced. In essence, those are gaming specific protocols built on top of L2 rollups.

At least two major gaming-focused networks, Ronin and Immutable, have announced plans in the last months to integrate support for L3s as part of their infrastructure. A smaller scale ecosystem with plans to expand its L3 infrastructure is Hytopia’s HYCHAIN, as its co-founder ArkDev explained in a recent interview with BlockchainGamer.

In the shadow of these announcements is TreasureDAO, a forerunner when it comes to founding its broader vision of decentralized gaming and interoperability on L3 rollups.

With its ecosystem games deployed on Arbitrum, an L2 built on top of Ethereum, Treasure is in many ways the epitome of decentralization. Governed by its DAO, since the foundation of Treasure in 2021, the team’s vision has been to build alongside its community, open source, transparently and to reward contributors with its ecosystem governance token MAGIC. 

As TreasureDAO co-founder John Patten put it in a recent Substack post, “Treasure’s aim has never been to be a simple marketplace or publisher, although these roles are crucial to our DAO. Our aim since the beginning has been broader and focused on a version of gaming that is inimitably crypto-native.”

A step towards realising that vision, TreasureDAO revealed earlier in 2024 it was looking to evolve its ecosystem with L3 chains revolving around its forthcoming Treasure Chain, an L2 rollup using Arbitrum Orbit and EigenDA. Called Infinity Chains, notably those L3s would be integrated cross-chain and allow game developers to be in charge of customization while still benefiting from remaining connected to the Treasure platform.

As stated in its documentation, “Creating the best gaming focused chain will not be enough. Developers will gravitate towards ecosystems like Treasure that provide fundamental platform services, a feature-rich publishing stack comprising on-chain and off-chain features.”

Apart from operating a hub for Treasure’s ecosystem games, TreasureDAO’s native infrastructure includes an NFT marketplace, a developer toolkit for games building on Treasure, and the Magicswap DEX. 

Games on Treasure

At the center of TreasureDAO’s gaming network is Treasure-native resource management game Bridgeworld, which is powered by the MAGIC token. Connecting the games and IPs of the Treasure ecosystem, Bridgeworld operates as a gaming platform for different gaming guilds.

Part of the larger Smolverse project, ever-evolving life sim RPG Smolbound from Darkbright Studios is built within the Treasure ecosystem and has recently dropped its first trailer. Based on the initial Smol Brains NFTs, Smolbound has also released a quest-centric platform as a build-up to the official game launch.

Hero RPG Tales of Ellaria serves as an entry point to the wider Ellaria metaverse, which driven by its community, aims to become an umbrella bridging various web3 games. In terms of gameplay, Tales of Ellaria is a battle RPG consisting of heroes and monsters inspired by games like Final Fantasy, Genshin Impact, and Maplestory.

One of the earliest and best-looking games in the Treasure ecosystem is BattleFly. Currently in open beta, BattleFly is a highly competitive strategy game where players go PVP to win MAGIC.

Another significant title in the Treasure network is action-heavy roguelite RPG The Beacon from Skillcap Studio. Currently in development, the game is available as an early prototype offering dungeons and loot NFTs, with forthcoming social MMO features to be integrated.

Significantly, in 2023 Arbitrum started flourishing alongside an uptick in games migrating to its ecosystem. One of them, Singapore-based developer Mighty Bear Games announced it was moving Mighty Action Heroes from Polygon to Arbitrum and the TreasureDAO and MAGIC gaming ecosystem. A fast-paced battle royale game, Mighty Action Heroes is currently in open beta and available via browser and Google Play.

Among other titles part of the Treasure platform are Zeeverse, Kaiju Cards, Knights of the Ether, LifeVerse, BitMates, Kuroro Beasts, AI Arena and Realm.

Treasure Ruby Testnet

Most recently, Treasure launched its first Treasure Chain testnet, Treasure Ruby. Alongside the launch, it also unveiled the Treasure Portal, which serves as the frontend through which developers can explore the Treasure Chain and its progression in depth. Currently the portal contains

• a bridge to move assets to Treasure Chain,
• an account page showing your assets on Treasure testnet,
• quests rewarded with Shards to encourage interaction with current testnet features and forthcoming games on Treasure,
• faucet, allowing users to get some testnet MAGIC in order to experiment with building on Treasure, and
• a new block explorer.

Going forward, a couple of new partnerships have been announced to bolster the development of Treasure Chain, including web3 infrastructure dev EigenLayer, cross-chain protocol LayerZero, Caldera, and Thirdweb.