OKX Ventures boosts TON ecosystem with $5m investment

• OKX Ventures’ investment adds to the recently launched $10 million Telegram Growth Hub.
• The $5 million investment in TON Ventures targets growth for Telegram-powered apps on TON blockchain.

OKX Ventures, the investment arm of global crypto exchange OKX, has invested $5 million in TON Ventures to bolster the development of Telegram-powered TON applications.

The OKX Ventures team announced the investment in The Open Network blockchain’s dedicated venture capital fund on Dec. 10. Per the announcement, the investment will go into efforts to accelerate the TON ecosystem’s developer ecosystem.

“This investment, alongside our recently launched Telegram Growth Hub, demonstrates our long-term conviction in TON’s potential to drive mainstream adoption of onchain technologies. We’re excited to work closely with TON Ventures’ founding team, whose deep ecosystem expertise will be invaluable in scaling the next generation of TON-native applications,” OKX Ventures partner Jeff Ren noted.

OKX Ventures unveiled the $10 million Telegram growth hub alongside The Open Platform and Folius Ventures. The goal is to bring blockchain applications and its benefits to Telegram’s more than 950 million monthly active users.

Eyeing web3 expansion

TON has in the past several months witnessed the explosive surge and traction for mini-apps. Other than Catizen and Notcoin, there has been notable attention on projects such as OKX Racer.

“The OKX Ventures team were one of the first supporters of the TON value proposition, which sits at the intersection of Telegram’s social graph and TON’s blockchain rails, to develop a vibrant ecosystem of Web3 consumer applications that would onboard millions of people,” TON Ventures partner Ian Wittkopp said.

So far, TON Ventures has secured $40 million in funding, with the target for future development including gaming and monetization tools.