We are delighted to share the Merit Circle ecosystem’s first quarterly Treasury report of 2024.
As always, this report is intended to provide a transparent overview of the Treasury’s current financial status. In the report, we share a breakdown of the Treasury as of March 31st 2024, including current investments and other financial activities.
During the past quarter, the Treasury increased from $118,132,538 as of December 31st 2023 to $201,252,368 as of March 31st 2024. This represents an increase of 70.36% compared to the previous quarter.
In Q1 2024, a total of 141,402,030 BEAM tokens were purchased at a value of $4,705,370. All BEAM tokens bought during the quarter have been burned.
It has been an eventful quarter. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the market have all shown strong performance, up roughly 50% from the start of the quarter. Altcoins have been much more of a mixed bag, with some big winners but mostly laggards. NFTs have also yet to find a proper bid. The tier 1 NFTs have been relatively stable in their ETH-denominated prices but have not made up lost ground in the bear market.
The Treasury has a wide composition of assets, which generally means it has slightly less beta exposure, making it easier to outperform in bear markets and a bit harder to overperform in bull markets. However, this is slightly changing with the number of highly value-accretive deals Merit Circle is generating as well as the ratio of venture investments value to USD and large cap positions. It’s encouraging to see that the Treasury outperformed the market, as well as BTC and ETH, given how strong the performance of the market has been.
Venture investments in general can create outsized returns compared to the market, but Merit Circle is further enhancing the Treasury’s activity in this field by taking advantage of its incubation capabilities and ongoing support capabilities leading to meaningful value creation for the projects. Leading to higher ownership stakes for the same amount of funds invested, compared to traditional web3 venture firms. Moreover, it also leads to a higher likelihood that these projects will succeed. Lastly, all of Merit Circle’s venture partners feed back into our ecosystem of infrastructure products, creating a win-win situation for the project and the Treasury. Below we will highlight some of the Treasury’s projects
We firmly believe that providing thorough and meaningful Treasury reports is paramount to our mission of transparency and accountability. It is with this commitment in mind that we're excited to present a more comprehensive overview of the state of the investment portfolio.
In this update, we provide insights into the specifics of some of the largest or most exciting investment positions. This includes new investments or important updates to current portfolio projects. As always, we welcome your questions, feedback, and engagement in this ongoing narrative.
Aether Games
Merit Circle invested $153,000 in Aether Games' token sale and seed round, backing their ambitious $4.5 million funding round. Aether Games is a pioneering transmedia studio revolutionizing gaming by seamlessly blending blockchain tech, captivating narratives, and traditional gaming experiences across media formats.
Led by gaming industry veterans, their flagship project includes Cards of Ethernity (a top Polygon/Sui trading card game), the upcoming Gates of Ethernity autobattler, an AR mobile app, and a CGI series. With an impressive portfolio spanning hit IPs like Hearthstone and God of War, Aether Games is well-positioned to redefine immersive, multimedia gaming universes.
Aethir
Merit Circle doubled down on contributing to its $1.5 million seed investment by securing $10 million worth of nodes during Aethir's inaugural decentralized AI node sale. This collaboration bridges Aethir's distributed GPU cloud infrastructure to the Beam ecosystem. Beam's rapidly growing game portfolio can now tap into Aethir's global decentralized computer network at discounted rates.
As web3 gaming demands increase, offloading intensive workloads to Aethir's scalable and distributed infrastructure positions our studios for seamless performance. This strategic alignment bolsters Beam's edge in supporting technically demanding metaverse experiences while accelerating Aethir's proliferation across gaming's web3 frontier.
Berachain
Merit Circle is proud to be part of Berachain's impressive $100 million Series B funding round, contributing $750,000 to support their growth. As a pioneering Layer 1 blockchain, Berachain stands out with its modular architecture and innovative "proof of liquidity" consensus mechanism. Their sophisticated economic model—involving BGT governance tokens, HONEY stablecoins, and BERA gas tokens—ensures autonomy, sustainability and user-friendliness.
Built on Cosmos SDK and being EVM-compatible, Berachain is well-positioned for global expansion and technological advancements. We're eager to witness Berachain's impact on the blockchain industry as they drive the next generation of blockchain platforms.
BloodLoop
BloodLoop is a 5v5 tactical hero shooter developed by 7 Digital Labs. Merit Circle, alongside the Avalanche Foundation and Citizen Capital, co-led a $4 million seed funding round, contributing $200,000 to support the development and growth of this promising Web3 title. BloodLoop captivates players with its unique maps, game modes, and NFT crafting, all powered by an Avalanche Subnet for a seamless onboarding experience. With over 350k registered users eagerly awaiting the closed beta, BloodLoop is set to make a name for itself in the gaming space.
Crypto Rogue Games
Merit Circle has invested $150,000 in Crypto Rogue Games, a Sweden & Estonia-based studio, as part of their $1.5 million seed funding round. The studio is currently developing Crystals of Naramunz (CoN), an immersive hack 'n' slash action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world. With a team of industry veterans from acclaimed titles like Path of Exile, Stellaris, and Pillars of Eternity, Crypto Rogue Games aims to redefine the ARPG genre through deep itemization, seamless web3 integration, and a game-first approach.
As the first project to fully utilize Beam's wallet API and SDK, Crystals of Naramunz showcases the potential of our blockchain infrastructure in enabling innovative gaming experiences. We're thrilled to support Crypto Rogue Games in their mission to pioneer blockchain technology in gaming and can't wait for the Closed Beta to launch in June.
Check out the sneak peek of Crystals of Naramunz utilizing Beam's wallet API and SDK: https://x.com/naramunz/status/1775513233232666695
Forgotten Playland
Forgotten Playland, a studio project of Merit Circle and Duckland Games, has made significant progress in the last quarter. The studio kicked off 2024 with the launch of the $FP token with an initial circulating supply of 5.5%, and secured $9 million during their private funding round. As of the date of this Treasury report, the $FP token is trading at a $300 million fully diluted valuation.
The official game launch is set for April 25th 2024 which will include more than 5 party games. As a close partner, Merit Circle is proud to be involved in Forgotten Playland's development. As a result of our collaboration, Forgotten Playland will also be present during the community event in Amsterdam on May 11th 2024.
GAM3S.GG
Merit Circle has invested $175,000 in GAM3S.GG as part of their $2 million strategic funding round, supporting their mission to aggregate content in web3 gaming. With the upcoming launch of their $G3 token (launched per published report), GAM3S.GG aims to onboard the next 100 million gamers onto their platform. The company has already attracted over 300,000 registered users, built a library of 350+ games, and established partnerships with major blockchain gaming titles.
We’re thrilled to support the biggest names in gaming, and support each other in a collaborative effort to enforce a shift in the current industry standards.
Moon Tropica
https://twitter.com/BuildOnBeam/status/1758160153562534255
Moon Tropica is an immersive open-world experience that seamlessly combines nostalgia with modern twists. Moon Tropica offers players a chance to own digital real estate, craft unique items, and participate in a thriving economy powered by the $CAH currency. With our confidence in the team's ability to deliver great gaming experiences, we look forward to supporting Moon Tropica's growth and being part of their exciting journey.
Moreover, Moontropica is building on Beam, which is another reason to be excited!
Pixelmon
What all started with a hilarious pixelated version of an NFT has been turned into a promising and wildly ambitious roadmap. Merit Circle is thrilled to participate alongside gaming investors like Animoca Brands and Delphi Ventures to back the decentralized web3 gaming IP Pixelmon with $250,000 in their recent $8 million seed round.
Pixelmon is set to accomplish a range of milestones: an open-world RPG Hunting Grounds, revamped desktop auto-battler Arena, and successful hypercasual launches like Kevin the Adventurer. Through Mon Protocol, they fractionalize IP for true digital ownership. With its major partners and aim to become one of the leading monster-collecting franchises, we’re excited to see what Pixelmon has in store for this year.
Tensorplex Labs
Merit Circle has invested $50,000 in Tensorplex Labs, a Web3 and AI startup that recently raised $3 million in a seed funding round led by Canonical Crypto and Collab+Currency. Tensorplex aims to build a decentralized AI infrastructure to prevent tech giants from monopolizing AI, which can lead to biases and censorship. The company will use the funds to develop novel capital and intelligence infrastructure and applications to accelerate the growth of open, decentralized AI networks like Bittensor. We're excited to support Tensorplex Labs in their mission to promote decentralization and fairness in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Toncoin
Merit Circle invested $1 million to accumulate a substantial position in Toncoin (TON), the native cryptocurrency of The Open Network blockchain. Our TON holdings are valued at $3,977,941, asof 31-03-2024, representing significant appreciation.
TON is a scalable layer-1 blockchain designed for mass adoption, aiming to onboard billions of users with ultra-fast, low-fee transactions. Toncoin powers the network's proof-of-stake consensus, governance, and serves as the base currency within TON's decentralized ecosystem of DeFi, DApps and services. Our strategic investment in TON aligns with Merit Circle's focus on cultivating open, community-driven blockchain platforms positioned for exponential growth and mainstream adoption.
The Treasury balance as of March 31st 2024 is $201,252,368.
When calculating the Treasury’s balance, we only include non-native assets. This means we do not count the balance of BEAM tokens towards the total balance of the Treasury since it might paint a diluted picture of the reality.
BEAM tokens used for providing liquidity in AMM protocols are included together with their paired tokens, with the total value of each LP pool disclosed on the dashboard.
Since BEAM tokens will not be utilized for investment purposes, they will not be included in the Treasury’s balance sheet. Please refer to the wallet overview below for an overview of the current balance of BEAM tokens.
The treasury also holds some very small positions, airdrop dust, residual tokens or gas fee money, with values lower than 0,001% of the total treasury, these balances are not recorded unless they become more significant in value.
We will break down the Treasury in three categories; liquid crypto assets, NFTs and venture investments.
Liquid assets
NFTs
Tokens & equity
*Other
The recent version of the Treasury dashboard includes a section for “Other Investments”, split across the three categories of liquid crypto tokens, NFTs and venture investments. As discussed above, since the start of the year and during the last quarter, some of the portfolio projects have been underperforming and have seen a significant loss of value. The Other Investments line item aggregates the costs and current realizable value of those projects that have underperformed and thus will usually reflect a significant loss relative to the cost amount.
We feel it is important to be transparent with the DAO community while maintaining the quality of the Treasury reports, thus positions which have negligible value or are written off can be tracked as “Others”, removing the need to provide each one with its own line.
Additions
In the previous quarter, we have added a variety of new investments such as Berachain, BloodLoop, GAM3S.GG, Tensorplex Labs, Pixelmon.
Devaluations & write offs:
A complete write-off occurs when the value of a project is deemed nil. This usually occurs when the project runs out of funding or when a project trades at a valuation that is close to zero. A devaluation in illiquid assets occurs if a project is raised at a lower valuation or when the valuation is otherwise decreased, either by lowering our staking directly, or indirectly through restructuring or dilution.
Live treasury dashboard
We have updated our dashboard with the most recent data as of March 31st 2024.
The Treasury dashboard is under continuous development to meet the transparency and accountability requirements of the DAO. It’s important to share correct information and provide anyone contributing to the DAO and other parts of the Beam / Merit Circle ecosystem with a clear overview of our current status. This is all accomplished through this dashboard.
With its development continuing and always changing, we are more than happy to receive feedback through any of the social channels. Without further ado, we invite you to dive in and see the current treasury status on our dashboard.
Visit the dashboard here - treasury.meritcircle.io
This dashboard has been developed by contributor CryptoCarl.
To operate completely transparently, we would like to provide a full list of wallet addresses Merit Circle currently utilizes.
Ethereum
Binance smart chain
Solana
Ronin
With an incredible start to the year, we’re thrilled to see our long-term conviction play out and see the teams we’ve always believed in deliver on their promises. With this new quarter that has just started, there’s already a lot happening, and it’s on us to maintain the momentum.
Notes
All balances and prices are based on calculations made on March 31st 2024.
All investments made after March 31st 2024 are not included in the treasury report unless specifically mentioned.
