Web3 investment company Animoca Brands will become the largest validator of the Telegram TON (Open Network) blockchain and plans to offer blockchain-based games to the messaging app’s 800 million strong user base.
An announcement shared with Cointelegraph outlines how the partnership will involve providing a funding, research, and analytics platform for third-party TON ecosystem applications.
The value of Animoca’s investment was not disclosed at the time of publication, but it is understood that some of the investment has been put directly into Toncoin and staked as part of the validator protocol.
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Animoca conducted extensive market research into TON’s broader ecosystem, focusing on the platform’s ability to drive cryptocurrency and GameFi adoption.
The company plans to strategically support TON Play, a gaming infrastructure project based on the TON blockchain. This infrastructure allows gaming applications to be built on TON and launched on Telegram, as well as porting existing web-based games to messaging applications.
Ton Play will enable developers to offer games to some 800 million Telegram users through its web app and mobile app’s PlayDeck bot, which allows users to browse a catalog of mobile games.
Animoca will also explore the ability to port select games and applications from its portfolio of more than 400 Web3 projects to Telegram.
Animoca Brands Research has also developed its own TON analytics dashboard, which collects various metrics from the TON open internet ecosystem, including the TON blockchain, TON DNS, TON storage, and TON website.
Justin Hyun, Growth Director of the TON Foundation, said that the analysis platform and in-depth research reports provided by Animoca will play an important role in integrating Web3 functions into the daily experience of Telegram users.
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Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu said the investment in TON is consistent with the company’s efforts to drive adoption and transition from Web2 to Web3.
“Participating in network verification underscores our confidence in successfully realizing the vision behind the TON project, which hopes to bring Web3 into the mainstream.”
Siu added that Animoca has discovered huge growth potential for games within the TON ecosystem and intends to promote the development of TON-based games in the coming years.
The partnership with TON is the second instance of Animoca becoming a validator of the proof-of-stake blockchain protocol in November 2023. The company joined fan token blockchain Chiliz Chain in November as a validator of its native proof-of-stake authority protocol. 14.
Chiliz Chain is the backbone of Socios.com, which operates a large number of fan tokens for some of the world’s largest football and sports teams. Europe’s most popular football clubs and several household name sports brands are already leveraging the solution to power Web3 Fan Tokens and other blockchain-based products.
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