- Pantera Capital has announced it invested an undisclosed amount in TON.
- The venture capital firm says TON’s integration with messaging platform Telegram could be a game-changer in crypto adoption.
Venture capital firm Pantera Capital has invested in The Open Network (TON) blockchain, the layer-1 network powered by Toncoin (TON).
TON was originally launched by messaging app giant Telegram and currently run by the open-source community.
In details shared in an announcement on Thursday, Pantera Capital said its investment aims at bolstering future growth for TON amid the push to bring more people to crypto via Telegram.
Telegram integration boosts TON’s potential
The VC platform’s confidence in TON’s future and capacity to drive crypto adoption is down to the extensive use of crypto in the Telegram network.
“By leveraging Telegram’s vast user base and seamless UX with the vibrancy of TON’s emerging ecosystem, we believe TON has the potential to become one of the largest crypto networks,” Pantera wrote in the blog post.
While Pantera did not disclose the amount involved in the investment, it says Telegram, which has more than 900 million monthly active users, is the only major messaging app that is well poised to integrate Web3.
As an illustration, the company cites Telegram’s monthly downloads of over 36.7 million in January this year as being ten times higher that of rival Signal.
“We believe Telegram is well positioned to bring crypto to the world because of its shared Web3 ethos and large distribution,” the company noted.
This outlook is strengthened by TON’s architecture, which features multiple components – TON Blockchain, TON Storage, TON DNS and TON Services. TON Blockchain serves as the backbone of this ecosystem, providing for a network with high transaction throughput, scalability and utility for millions of users.
Toncoin (TON) surges
Pantera is investing in TON at a time the crypto platform is garnering massive interest from across the ecosystem.
Telegram has driven some of the biggest developments for TON, particularly its endorsement of the project. The decision to incorporate Toncoin (TON) token in a revenue-sharing program for channel owners. Telegram is also bringing tokenized emojis and stickers to its users via the TON blockchain.
Meanwhile, Tether’s integration and launch of native USDT on TON is another huge step for Telegram users.
TON price soared after the Pantera Capital news, with the altcoin jumping more than 12% to highs of $5.39 early Friday.