Market Maker DWF Labs Firms TON Partnership with $10M Investment 

Crypto market maker DWF Labs has announced that it will become “a prominent supporter of the TON ecosystem.” The company is also investing $10 million in the Layer-1 blockchain network. 

TON — or The Open Network — is a blockchain project originally conceived by the creators of the Telegram instant messaging application. However, the TON community now develops the blockchain and steers its direction.

DWF Labs enters “mutually beneficial partnership” with TON

Leading digital currency market maker and Web3 investment company DWF Labs has entered into a “long-term partnership” with TON. As part of the deal, DWF Labs will invest $10 million to help grow the TON ecosystem. A press release detailing the agreement states that the company plans to invest in a total of 50 TON projects over the next year. 

Alongside a $10 million investment, DWF Labs will support TON with token development, exchange listings and market creation. On that latter point, the release notes TONcoin’s current $20 million trading volume, and confidently claims that DWF Labs will double the figure within three months. To help sustain volumes, the market-making firm plans to develop a reliable OTC market for traders making larger transactions. 

A Managing Partner of DWF Labs, Andrew Grachev, commented on the partnership: 

“We are excited by the TON Foundations’ vision to deliver a decentralized internet, and so are delighted to partner with them to support projects directly and foster growth in transactions.”

The Open Network is a proof-of-stake blockchain designed in 2018 by the brothers that created the Telegram instant messaging app. The project ran into legal troubles for its initial coin offering and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Telegram to return funds to investors. 

Following a 2020 judgment against Telegram, the TON community took over development, quickly establishing the TON Community Foundation. As an open-source project that was already in the test net phase, much of the network code was already available.

TON ecosystem now going from strength to strength

Despite its rough start, the TON Foundation was already expanding rapidly before the DWF Labs partnership news. In April this year, major exchanges Huobi and KuCoin joined the likes of 3Commas Capital to create a $250 million TON ecosystem fund for the network. 

The project has also recently shipped two major products that it believes will help build an improved, decentralized internet. TON Sites is a feature that removes the need for centralized domain name registries, with user wallets authenticating identities. 

Meanwhile, TON Proxy is an anonymity-preserving feature that maintains user privacy when connecting to the network. These releases follow the Telegram app integrating crypto payments via TON in April. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice