TON Launches $25 Million Accelerator Program to Invest $50,000 – $250,000 Per Project

The Open Network (TON), a layer-1 blockchain formerly developed by Telegram, has introduced a $25 million fund dedicated to supporting projects that are building on its ecosystem.

“The capital will be provided by http://TONcoin.Fund, a $250 million TON-based fund dedicated to supporting founders, and will be funneled into various key projects, with a particular focus on DeFi,” TON said in a Twitter statement

The ‘TON Accelerator Program’ will provide investment ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 per project along with partnerships and mentorship opportunities facilitated by TON’s staff, said Justin Hyun, the head of incubation and growth at TON Foundation.

“Funding forms part of our local hubs rollout strategy and our ecosystem will work to attract new developers as well as successful repeat founders, based across a variety of key global locations.”

Here are some requirements to receive funding:

• The initial recipients of the funding will primarily be projects that took part in a recent TON hackathon, with a specific emphasis on incubating decentralized finance (DeFi) projects
• The funding will be targeted towards supporting and nurturing these projects within the TON ecosystem
• In addition to being built on the TON blockchain, projects must have a minimum viable product (MVP) already developed and be in need of support in areas such as marketing, business development, and technology
• The initial selection of projects for the funding round will focus on those that took part in Hack-a-TONx DoraHacks, a 2-month-long virtual hackathon organized in collaboration with DoraHacks

“Proof-of-concept or prototype teams that require greater technical support should apply for earlier-stage grants.”

The TON blockchain’s architecture is designed to facilitate substantial scalability allowing for the processing of millions of transactions per second. Since 2020, TON has been run as a community-led, open-source project.

In 2021, TON was working with:

• Cameroon
• The Republic of Congo, and
• The Democratic Republic of Congo

to launch localized stablecoins for each of the Central African countries on the TON blockchain.

The priority of the 3 countries was to adopt a blockchain network that is both inexpensive for transactions and relatively accessible seeking to create something like Venmo or M-PESA.

TON was seen as attractive because of its focus on integration with Telegram and the distribution benefits it brings.

Learn more about the accelerator program here.