OKX Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange OKX, has announced a $5 million investment in TON Ventures, the venture capital fund supporting The Open Network (TON).
The funding will be used for the development of Telegram-native applications built on TON’s blockchain infrastructure. The aim is to form a network of experienced builders to develop best practices for TON applications, said OKX in a press release.
Who Are the Investors Behind TON Ventures?
In an interview with CryptoNews last month Ian Wittkopp a managing partner at TON Ventures discussed the new $40 million fund which is co-managed with Inal Kardan. Wittkopp said geographically, the CIS region and Asia are seen as key markets for funding. TON Ventures plans to onboard Web 2 users to blockchain gaming.
So far, TON Ventures has backed projects like the DeLabs and Goat Gaming platforms, creator economy infrastructure like Memetics that allow Telegram communities to build mini economies. As well as artificial intelligence (AI) apps like Grably that use TON and Telegram to source data for AI models.
“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,” said Wittkopp.
“They [OKX Ventures] have done an amazing job attracting and funding top-tier developers, pushing the TON ecosystem to new heights,” adds Wittkopp.
The TON fund usually deploys investments of up to $500,000 for early-stage projects. In the coming months, TON Ventures said it will focus on supporting the emergence of mid-core gaming experiences. As well as the expansion of monetization tools available to creators.
Earlier this year, OKX Ventures and Aptos Foundation initiated a $10 million accelerator fund for projects built on Aptos. The fund aims to bolster widespread Web3 adoption by supporting the growth of infrastructure, social, gaming and DeFi-related projects.
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