Today, TON Ventures, founded by former core members of the TON Foundation, was officially established. This new venture capital firm is backed by a $40 million fund pool and focuses on supporting early-stage crypto projects. TON Ventures will serve as a matchmaker to allow investors and developers to share the resources and opportunities of the TON ecosystem.

TON Ventures will focus on supporting three types of projects: user applications based on the Telegram social network, Telegram applets, and infrastructure and tools to help developers create popular applications. Selected projects will not only receive financial support, but also leverage the team's global resources and experience, and have benefits such as Telegram advertising, media exposure, strategic cooperation opportunities, and growth and traffic experiments on the TON platform.

TON Ventures is led by Ian W, former director of the TON Accelerator, and Inal K , former head of the TON Foundation’s gaming department. Previously, Ian and Inal had successfully incubated the popular TON chain games Catizen and Gatto, as well as the perpetual contract trading platform Tradoor.

Ian W., Managing Director of TON Ventures, said: "TON and Telegram have created a new paradigm for Web3. With our deep involvement in this ecosystem, we believe that the biggest opportunity for TON lies in the right capital allocation. Now we have the opportunity to share our insights with innovators and developers to help them thrive in the fertile soil of TON and Telegram. By connecting visionary investors and cutting-edge projects, we hope to accelerate the development of the TON ecosystem and promote revolutionary progress in decentralized technology."

The establishment of TON Ventures is timely. In recent months, the TON ecosystem and community have shown explosive growth, and the number of daily active users has surpassed Ethereum. In July this year, the total asset size on TON exceeded US$1.14 billion, a full 15 times increase from the beginning of 2024. At the same time, the "play-to-earn" game was very popular in 2024, bringing hundreds of millions of new users to Web3 games. Among them, Notcoin was a blockbuster, attracting 35 million players in just 3 months and giving back more than 90% of the tokens to the community.

About TON Ventures

TON Ventures is committed to building a bridge of opportunity for developers in the TON ecosystem. Founded by two former TON Foundation generals, Ian W. and Inal K., TON Ventures provides projects with rich expertise and valuable experience in developing in the TON and Telegram environments.

For more information, visit https://tonventures.io/ ; follow @ton_ventures, or join the Telegram group at t.me/ton_ventures .

About The Open Network (TON)

The Open Network is a global decentralized blockchain community dedicated to making cryptocurrency easy for everyone. By building a Web3 ecosystem within Telegram, TON’s vision is to give 500 million users true control over their digital identities, data, and assets by 2028. For more information, visit https://ton.org/.