Venture Capital Firms Invest More than $400,000,000 in Layer-1 Asset Toncoin, According to the TON Foundation

Venture capital firms have invested more than $400 million into the layer-1 asset Toncoin (TON), according to the team behind the project.

The Open Network Foundation, also known as the TON Foundation, notes that investors include Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, Benchmark, Kingsway, Vy Capital, Draper Associates, Libertus Capital, CoinFund, Hypersphere, SkyBridge and Karatage.

TON was initially developed by the encrypted messaging platform Telegram and known as Telegram Open Network, but Telegram parted ways with the project in 2020 following a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The Open Network, an open-source community of developers, took over management of the technology that year. TON, however, can still be sent by Telegram’s 1 billion monthly active users within the platform without entering long wallet addresses.

In January, TON became the “exclusive blockchain” for Telegram’s Mini Apps Ecosystem.

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, says his firm is excited about the layer-1 blockchain’s technology and its access to Telegram’s global distribution.

“The TON team is the best in the world at the intersection of consumer product thinking and crypto infrastructure.”

TON is trading at $3.61 at time of writing. The 14th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down more than 2% in the past 24 hours.

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