Ton Ventures raised $40 million in funding for Telegram’s crypto ecosystem

Senior team of builders Open network (TON), Telegram's blockchain of choice, has announced that it has raised $40 million in a for-profit venture, TON Ventures, to launch the next-generation on-chain Telegram mini-app.

The fund is led by Ian Wittkop, former head of the Ton Accelerator Program, and Enal Cardan, former Head of Gaming at the Ton Foundation. It will initially focus on early-stage projects with investments of $500,000 or less, Wittkop said. Decrypt.

At a later date, Ton Ventures will expand to support larger “strategic” deals with protocols that require guidance to enter the Ton and Telegram ecosystems, he added.

The newly formed VC fund said it is looking to back consumer, “mass appeal” applications within Telegram, the leading messaging platform, and working on Tons. Over the past few months, crypty-backed mini-apps—mostly played with Offer crypto rewards Through air drops – they exploded in popularity, Telegram opened up. 950 million Monthly active users worldwide.

While the Ton Ventures team says that explains why the game has served as an entry point for most Telegram mini-app developers, they anticipate the diversity of the Ton App ecosystem and the type of projects Ton Ventures supports will expand rapidly. .

“This makes sense because WeChat mini apps have their first capabilities with enterprise apps and games,” Wittkop said. “And over time, small app development into live apps, mobile marketing, functional tools, etc.”

The reference to WeChat, China's so-called “everything app,” is no coincidence. Tons of other developers who build on it already have. He expressed hope With the help of blockchain technology, Telegram could soon become the West's first integrated go-to for everything from online shopping to banking and car rides.

Peer-to-peer transactions in small apps with TonCoin, Ton's native cryptocurrency and USDTA popular stablecoin, Telegram has created a framework for establishing a whole economy within its own digital walls. Like wildly successful game-finding games Notcoin, Hamster KombatAnd Katzen They demonstrated the potential effectiveness of the system by connecting smartphone users wherever they are.

Now, the challenge is to sustainably grow Telegram's system of small applications to maturity. To achieve this goal, in addition to dangling financial support, Ton Ventures offers free advertising and media support for selected projects, as well as strategic partnerships on Ton and development and traffic testing.

Ton Ventures isn't the first program designed to leverage the red-hot success of Telegram's mini-app games into long-term growth. Last month, the creators of Notcoin kick off An accelerator program that aims to support the next ton of supported mini-applications.

Edited by Andrew Hayward.