TON Ventures, a for-profit fund with $40 million in funding, has been created by a group of senior builders of The Open Network (TON), Telegram's blockchain of choice. The fund will focus on early-stage projects with investments of $500,000 or less, with a later expansion to support larger "strategic" deals with protocols seeking guidance on entering the TON and Telegram ecosystems. TON Ventures is looking to support consumer, "mass appeal" applications that exist within Telegram and run on TON, with a focus on sustainingably growing Telegram's system of mini apps into maturity. The fund will also offer selected projects free advertising and media support, as well as access to strategic partnerships and growth and traffic experiments at TON.