In a strategic move, Animoca Brands has officially become the largest validator for The Open Network (TON) Blockchain, as announced by the TON Foundation earlier today. This collaboration signifies a promising effort to advance digital property rights within gaming and the open metaverse.

Facilitated by Manuel Stotz from Kingsway Capital, this partnership underscores Animoca Brands' commitment to fortifying the TON ecosystem. The primary focus is on fostering the growth of third-party gaming and GameFi projects within the expansive TON ecosystem, with an emphasis on scalability and user-friendly decentralized applications (dApps).

Prior to their investment in TON's ecosystem, Animoca Brands conducted extensive research, resulting in the creation of two comprehensive research papers. These papers delve into the potential of TON Blockchain to expedite mainstream cryptocurrency adoption.

Key factors such as the user-friendliness of TON-based dApps and the scalability of TON Blockchain were identified as pivotal to achieving community growth and the TON Foundation's vision of making cryptocurrency accessible to all. To provide transparency on TON's growth metrics, Animoca Brands developed an analytics dashboard, offering stakeholders and enthusiasts detailed insights into TON's evolutionary journey. The dashboard serves as a transparent overview of TON's development.

Animoca Brands' investment in The Open Network is a pivotal step towards the next era of blockchain-based gaming. Its new analytics platform and in-depth research reports represent alignment with TON Foundation's mission. Together, we will infuse Web3 seamlessly into the daily experiences of Telegram users, particularly in gaming, for a global audience to enjoy.

Justin Hyun, Director of Growth at TON Foundation.

The collaboration between TON and Animoca Brands aims to simplify the onboarding process for existing web2 users into innovative web3 mini-apps with robust use case value. This mutual commitment underscores the shared goal of facilitating a seamless transition from web2 to web3, aligning with industry trends. Among the projects gaining Animoca Brands' support is TON Play, a gaming infrastructure initiative within the TON ecosystem.

TON Play provides essential infrastructure and solutions for gaming projects on TON to launch directly on Telegram. Developers can seamlessly port existing web games into Telegram via a web app, thanks to the user-friendly TON Play Toolkit. This strategic move allows Animoca Brands to deliver projects directly to Telegram's extensive user base of over 800 million, offering game developers an opportunity to engage with this active community.

As the collaboration unfolds, it aims to usher in a new era in web3 gaming, combining TON Blockchain's scalability with Animoca Brands' portfolio of over 400 web3 projects. This union sets the stage for innovative and immersive gaming experiences to reach a broader audience through the Telegram platform.

This strategic investment in TON is a key part of our broader commitment to help onboard the next million Web3 users by facilitating a seamless transition from Web2 to Web3. Taking part in the network’s validation underlines our faith in the successful realization of the vision behind the TON project as it looks to bring Web3 into the mainstream. We have already seen significant growth potential in games with TON, and we’re looking forward to working with the other innovative teams to build exciting TON-based games.

Yat Siu, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands.