The Open Network (TONNE), a layer-1 blockchain originally built by Telegram, announced the establishment of a $25 million fund for initiatives based on its ecosystem on May 22.
The “TONNE Accelerator Programme,” which will finance $50,000 to $250,000 per project, will be accompanied by partnerships and mentorships from TON’s team. TONNE Foundation’s head of incubation and growth, Justin Hyun, commented:
“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.”
The initial financing pool will be oriented towards startups who participated in a recent TONNE hackathon, with an emphasis on incubating decentralised finance, or DeFi, ideas. In addition to the requirement of building on TONNE, projects must have a minimal viable product (MVP) ready and require marketing, business, and technology assistance.
#TONcoinFund's $250M commitment will boost key projects, focusing on #DeFi.
Offering $50-250k per project plus mentorship via partners like #Gotbit, #Web3Port, #Tonstarter, #TEB, #CypherCapital. Excited to expand with more partners, drive #Web3 innovation, and attract global… pic.twitter.com/QHYvKHtT9S
— TON 💎 (@ton_blockchain) May 22, 2023
“Proof-of-concept or prototype teams that require more technical support should apply for earlier-stage grants,” according to TON’s developers.
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TONNE has been run as a community-led, open-source project since 2020. Its architecture is touted to allow for extensive scaling and transaction processing at a rate of millions of transactions per second. TONNE received an initial $250 million commitment from big corporations for its ecosystem TONcoin Fund in April. Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the Congo revealed plans to use the TONNE blockchain shortly after its inception.
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