👋 Goodbye, Horizon

Hey frens. It’s Tuesday, and after the markets rained downward yesterday, I’m still here. Gaming-focused tokens fell anywhere from 13% to 29%, with Gunzilla’s GUN token down about 59% from its all-time high about eight days ago.

Today, we’ve got an exclusive behind-the-scenes story for you on one of the biggest players in the blockchain gaming space.

— Kate Irwin

P.S. Let me know how you’re liking The Drop! Send me an email at [email protected].

Sequence sunsets Horizon game brand

Crypto gaming infrastructure firm Sequence — which also owns Horizon Blockchain Games — is shutting down its Horizon brand. 

Horizon Blockchain Games is no more. Existing resources and products under that brand, including its flagship 2019 game Skyweaver, will now exist solely under the Sequence brand, Sequence shared exclusively with The Drop and Blockworks. 

“This name change is a commitment to clarity — and our mission to unify blockchain ecosystems and empower builders across Web3,” said Peter Kieltyka, cofounder and CEO at Sequence, in a statement.

The move also finalizes Sequence’s pivot away from game development as it allocates more of its resources to building crypto infrastructure.

“Skyweaver still has a community,” Sequence cofounder and Chief Storyteller Michael Sanders told Blockworks in an interview, noting that the game remains playable. 

“A lot of the inspiration for Skyweaver was to understand how to build a developer platform, right? Like, to understand the pain points that players are dealing with, that game developers are dealing with, regarding things like accounts and payments and wallets and transactions and marketplaces and, you know, all of that,” Sanders said, adding: “Skyweaver really taught us what’s required in a development platform.”

Horizon Blockchain Games raised a $40 million Series A in 2022. It had also raised another $13.3 million across three prior seed funding rounds, per Crunchbase data.

Sequence also said it’s acquired Light, a crypto tech firm focused on tackling the Ethereum “chain abstraction” challenge. Because there are so many Ethereum L2 and even “L3” blockchains — as well as “sidechains” and other separate EVM-compatible L1 chains — it can be difficult for non-technical or new users in crypto to navigate the space without encountering hiccups, roadblocks, glitches, delays or other problems.

The goal of chain abstraction is to make as much of the technical side of a multichain experience happen under the hood, so that users don’t have to do things like manually bridge tokens, pay to “wrap” tokens, “sign” with a wallet frequently, or face delays when trying to complete transactions.

“Developers need access to all of Ethereum and its buying power, and users want intuitive and seamless experiences. That’s the Web3 we’re building—fast, accessible, and seamlessly interoperable,” said Light founder Shun Kakinoki in a statement. 

Kakinoki is now Sequence’s head of cross-chain post-acquisition.

Sequence provides infrastructure for some of the biggest players in the crypto gaming space, typically offering those services as “white-label.” That means you don’t see their name on a product that they provided to another brand. Instead, the wallet or feature shows the client’s branding.

For instance, crypto gaming platform Immutable uses Sequence’s embedded wallets. Sequence also counts Ubisoft, Polygon, SKALE, Avalanche and Base among its clients.

Sequence also offers an in-app payment system via Sequence Pay. The firm has its own indexer so game devs can assess activity across multiple chains. It also offers analytics and a marketplace API, and it allows devs to cover gas fees for user transactions.

Sequence’s investors include Brevan Howard Digital, Take-Two Interactive, Coinbase, Initialized Capital, Bitkraft, Polychain, Morgan Creek Digital, Xsolla, Polygon and Ubisoft.

Treasure troubles

Treasure DAO is leaving gaming.

The once gaming-focused Treasure DAO has killed its gaming publishing platform and entire blockchain, accompanied by a round of layoffs. Several key leaders have also recently left the DAO.

Financial troubles? Yep.

Treasure cofounder John Patten told me in a DM: "We’re good. We have runway. Leaner team now."

Before its layoffs, Treasure's annual burn was the following, according to the team:

• $8.3M in "general treasury usage"

• $816K in “Bridgeworld” usage

A Treasure financial transparency report shows that the DAO saw over $11.3 million in quarterly expenses in Q4 last year alone, with $40,000 in quarterly revenue.

They had funds to last until July 2025 in their previous state, according to the team. Now, they have $2.4 million in stablecoin runway, as well as 22.3 million MAGIC (which is worth about $1.56 million at the time of writing). 

The team is also trying to pull about $786,000 in stablecoins, BTC and ETH off market maker Flowdesk to add what Patten says is an additional two months of runway ($393,000 a month). If able to withdraw and swap that MAGIC, they would have a total of $4.746 million.

But if Treasure is able to get by on roughly $393,000 a month like Patten suggested, Treasure could continue on for about 10 to 12 months — assuming the price of MAGIC does not fall further, or the team swaps their MAGIC into stablecoins.

We know they had $74 million in crypto in mid-2023, according to a financial transparency report from the DAO. Their token launched in November 2021, and the team had raised $6.5 million in funding across two seed rounds in 2021 and 2022.

"We spent too long trying to win a prize not even worth fighting for," Patten said in a video. 

At one point, more than 40 people were working for Treasure. We know at least 15 have been laid off or left. Now, their gaming distribution plans are cancelled and they're pivoting to AI.

"We are aggressively sunsetting the entire game publishing stack and helping partners unwind their integrations. The DAO had no option but to eliminate publishing support as quickly as possible," Patten said. 

Some games have begun leaving Treasure as a result of the shakeup. The Beacon game team said that Treasure’s current vision “no longer aligns with the goals we have for our game and ecosystem. For this and other reasons, we have decided to fully depart from their ecosystem."

"The pivot away from game publishing was not a choice. It was a matter of survival," Patten explained. 

Notably, I interviewed Patten and Treasure cofounder Karel Vuong in February, and there was no mention of Treasure’s financial troubles at the time. Since then, Vuong has left Treasure. 

I’ve heard rumors that Treasure’s financial issues may have been obvious to some community members since October.

During that February interview, though, Vuong said the team wanted to focus on crypto-forward indie games. 

Now, gaming for Treasure is a thing of the past.