Venture units of Huobi and KuCoin became among the sponsors of a $250 million fund created to finance projects in the Toncoin ecosystem. ForkLog confirmed this information with representatives of The Open Network.
Alongside Huobi Incubator and KuCoin Ventures, funds for the fund were provided by MEXC Pioneer Fund, 3Commas Capital, Orbs, TON Miners and Kilo Fund.
The Toncoin Fund will support developers who use the TON network with grants, investments, mentorship and other assistance.
“The TON network is becoming accessible to millions of users thanks to the community’s efforts to integrate Telegram bots and personalize the interface. Toncoin Fund is prepared to support decentralized exchanges, stablecoins, NFTs and other TON-based dapps,” said Benjamin Ramo, managing partner of the fund, in a ForkLog interview.
In May 2020, Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the closure of the Telegram Open Network (TON) project due to a legal dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a ban on distributing Gram tokens.
Subsequently, several independent teams continued to work on the blockchain based on the project’s code. They include Free TON (renamed to Everscale), a Chinese project by TON Community and NewTON. The latter launched the NewTON Blockchain testnet in May 2020.
In August 2021, the TON team handed over the ton.org domain and the project’s GitHub repository to the project, which renamed itself The Open Network. It is this entity that is behind the development of Toncoin.
In December 2021, Durov publicly backed the developers.
The project is independent of Telegram but plans to integrate Toncoin into the Telegram messenger.
“TON could become the first blockchain network accessible to millions of users, thanks to the community’s efforts to integrate Telegram through built-in bots, as well as proposals for a native interface. Toncoin Fund is pleased to support the first decentralized exchanges, NFT projects and other TON-based dapps,” said Benjamin Ramo, the fund’s managing partner.
In January 2022, former VKontakte head Andrey Rogozov joined the project’s development team.