New $250M TONcoin Fund targets DEX and NFT tools on TON blockchain

cointelegraph.com:

The TON Foundation, an organization building on the Telegram-initiated blockchain project, The Open Network (TON), has chosen the TONcoin Fund as its official ecosystem fund.

The TONcoin Fund announced on Monday the launch of an ecosystem fund focusing on supporting TON-based projects, securing an initial collective commitment of up to $250 million from major firms within the industry. The fund has earned the title of the TON Foundation’s official incubation partner, meaning that they will support the fund’s portfolio investments.

The fund’s contributors included firms like Huobi Incubator, Kucoin Ventures, MEXC Pioneer Fund, 3Commas Capital, the blockchain startup Orbs, TON Miners and Kilo Fund. The fund aims to deploy funds through incubation, investment, grants, hackathons as well as educational programs as projects are accepted and incubated.

TONcoin Fund managing partner Benjamin Rameau told Cointelegraph that the fund is working “very closely” with the TON Foundation, hoping to help the TON blockchain reach its full potential. Rameau said that the fund is focused explicitly on Web3-related developments and is now incubating a decentralized exchange and nonfungible token (NFT) project. “We are also eying opportunities with wallets, NFT marketplaces and decentralized finance,” he added.

“TON may become the first blockchain network accessible to millions of users thanks to the Telegram integration efforts by the community via in-app bots as well as native interface proposals,” Rameau noted. He referred to Pavel Durov’s public endorsement of TONcoin in late 2021, which followed an announcement of TONcoin’s payment integrations with the Telegram messenger.

Rameau, who is also the founder of Jenny Metaverse DAO and partner at