TVM Ventures reportedly launched its inaugural fund, a $100 million initiative dedicated to expanding the ecosystem of TON blockchain as a financial network.
Led by Steve Yun, the former President of TON Foundation, TVM Ventures will provide startups and enterprises with the “capital, infrastructure, and technical resources necessary to lead the mass adoption” of decentralized finance (DeFi) and payment finance (PayFi).
TVM Ventures envisions the TON blockchain as becoming the global financial network for the following factors:
- TON’s access to Telegram’ 950 million global, “crypto-centric, peer-to-peer, and cross-border” userbase;
- Better on-chain user experience, enabled by the native integration of TON-based wallet inside Telegram;
- TON’s exclusive right to service Telegram’s growing ecosystem of mini apps, which generates mass-market services and products; and
- Scalability of TON Blockchain accomplished by its asynchronous architecture and dynamic sharding.
The convergence of these components is poised to generate the long-awaited mass-market demand for blockchain-based payments.
In parallel to the vision of TON Community of empowering 500 million on-chain users by 2028, TVM Ventures founder Steve Yun stated that
“Our mission is to build an advanced and comprehensive financial system capable of meeting the financial needs of 500 million on-chain users by the next cycle.”
To that end, the fund will focus on three key investment pillars:
- DeFi and Infrastructure: TVM Ventures will prioritize DeFi protocols, recognizing their foundational role as the equivalent of savings accounts in the traditional banking services. The fund will focus on the components of infrastructure that affect the DeFi experience on TON.
- Cross-Border Payments and PayFi: TVM Ventures seeks to accelerate PayFi founders who address the inefficiencies in the traditional payments space.
- Security: TVM Ventures underscores its commitment to security across its ecosystem by collaborating with the security auditors for the TON Virtual Machine.
By conducting research, TVM Ventures aims to bridge the information gap between the institutions and the opportunities in TON Blockchain.
A key element of TVM Ventures’ network is its access to a “broad base of on-chain liquidity providers,” whose participation is “crucial for the success of DeFi and PayFi protocols.”
In contrast to the push to rely on EVM-compatible side-chains or so-called network extensions, TVM Ventures affirms that “building on TON’s asynchronous architecture is not an option, but a foundational requirement to building a scalable application on-chain.”
As the TVM ecosystem expands across workchains, TVM Ventures look forward to accelerating the “growth of these ecosystems under TON’s trustless bridge, its masterchain.”
With this outlook, TVM Ventures is committed to working with teams capable of developing “smart contract logic on the TON Virtual Machine.”
Steve Yun remains an “active” board member of the TON Foundation and focuses his time on “expanding the TON’s native ecosystem.”