A range of heavyweight venture capital firms have bought $400 million of The Open Network’s native coin, Toncoin from early investors
Announced on March 20, 2025, by the TON Foundation, this bold move sees top firms such as Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, Benchmark, and Kingsway—joined by Vy Capital, Draper Associates, Libertus Capital, CoinFund, Hypersphere, SkyBridge, and Karatage—buying up tokens directly.
The TON blockchain has experienced massive growth in the last 24 months. In just one year, active accounts soared from 4 million to 41 million, and Toncoin holders now hit 121 million—more than Bitcoin wallet owners.
Investors see TON as a goldmine because of its potential to transform decentralized finance, online payments, and other blockchain-based applications, considering its integration with Telegram, which gives it a unique advantage, as the messaging app already has a massive global user base. Pavel Durov revealed Telegram now has 1 billion active users.
If a significant portion of Telegram’s 1 billion monthly active users start using TON-powered financial services, the blockchain could become one of the most widely adopted in the world.
The TON Foundation is focused on accelerating this growth. With fresh investments, they plan to expand more and integrate TON deeper into Telegram’s ecosystem. Its target is to onboard 450 million users by 2028, which would be 30% of Telegram’s active user base.
To get there, the foundation plans to introduce DeFi tools, making it easy for users to access decentralized financial services like lending, borrowing, and staking within the app. They will introduce Multiplayer mini-games allowing users to compete, earn rewards, and trade in-game assets securely using TON.
In-app payment solutions will enable seamless cryptocurrency transactions for goods and services, making Telegram a powerful hub for digital payments. Additionally, on-chain collectibles and rewards will be introduced, giving users unique digital assets and incentives to engage more with TON.
Shaun Maguire, Partner at Sequoia Capital, praises TON’s combination of consumer product thinking and crypto infrastructure, amplified by Telegram’s vast reach. “The TON team is the best in the world at the intersection of consumer product thinking and crypto infrastructure.”
The founder of Ribbit (a global venture capital focused on financial technology investments), Micky Malka, said that TON and Telegram is a perfect match for the kind of team it’s firm partners with. According to him, the goal “to expand financial access globally by coupling the best technology with a seamless consumer experience” makes it more enticing to invest in TON and Telegram.
Peter Fenton who is a Partner at Benchmark explained that the massive user base of Telegram which should reach 1.5 billion by 2030 “creates an unprecedented opportunity in the history of humanity” to allow the flow of liquidity as never seen before. He added that TON, as a blockchain, qualifies as the infrastructure to enable this flow as well as provide “human-scale democratization of financial activity.”
Five months ago, Tether revealed plans to launch Dirham-pegged stablecoin on The Open Network at the TON Gateway event in Dubai. This plan follows Tether’s earlier release of USDt on the network. Within the same period, Bitget Wallet launched its own Telegram Mini App wallet, hitting an impressive 6 million users within three days of launch.
In January, The Open Network became the sole blockchain for Telegram, thus strengthening the relationship the duo have built over the years.
