press release

TVM Ventures Launches $100 Million Fund to Expand TON Blockchain as Global Financial Network

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — 3rd February 2025 — TVM Ventures has launched its inaugural fund, a $100 million initiative dedicated to expanding the ecosystem of TON blockchain as a global 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).

A Vision for Financial Inclusion

TVM Ventures envisions the TON blockchain as becoming the world's leading global financial network for the following factors:

  1. TON’s unique access to Telegram’s extensive 950 million global, crypto-centric, peer-to-peer, and cross-border userbase;
  2. Unmatched on-chain user experience, enabled by the native integration of TON-based wallet inside Telegram;
  3. TON's exclusive right to service Telegram’s growing ecosystem of mini apps, which generates mass-market services and products; and
  4. Extreme 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."

Strategic Focus of TVM Ventures

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 vast inefficiencies in the traditional payments space.
  • Security: TVM Ventures underscores its commitment to security across its ecosystem by collaborating with the most advanced security auditors for the TON Virtual Machine.

By conducting in-depth research, TVM Ventures aims to bridge the information gap between the institutions and the unique opportunities in TON Blockchain.

A key element of TVM Ventures’ unique 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.

The Future of TON is TVM-Based Multichain

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 more specialized 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 exclusively with teams capable of developing smart contract logic on the TON Virtual Machine.

“Together with courageous and genius founders who share our conviction in TON’s native potential, we will shape the future of TON and TVM,” Yun declared.

Leadership Transition

Steve Yun remains an active board member of the TON Foundation and focuses his time on expanding the TON’s native ecosystem.

For more information on TVM Ventures, visit our website tvm.ventures or follow us on X and Telegram.

For inquiries, please contact tolk@tvm.ventures.