Grant Circus on TON: New Season — New Hopes

The CEO of TON Foundation announced a new way to support projects on the TON blockchain. This time, five areas (Payments, DeFi, GameFi, Telegram In-App Economy, AI) will be backed with money, connections, and partnerships.

It's worth reminding that the grant program on TON was launched three times before — and each time it ended in failure. Either there were no projects, or there were many projects but no support, or TON Foundation funds just weren't allocated.

Now the new leadership has decided to revive this idea again, and only time will tell how it will work in practice. If "support" only means PR and mentorship, without grants and investments, it's unlikely to motivate many. In crypto, everyone wants funding, not just advice.

The current phrasing of "vertical fit, traction, product quality" sounds nice, but in practice, it could easily turn into "insiders get everything, outsiders get nothing," as has happened before.

There's another risk: if everyone starts to develop projects in the same areas (games, AI, etc.), the market may overheat. There will first be waves of hype, followed by a "graveyard" — projects dying one after another because there are too few users, and they aren't infinite.

The initiative is good, especially considering that there were no grant programs in TON at all, but so far, it seems more like a marketing campaign. The success of this story will depend on whether there will be real resources and funding behind the words. If TON Foundation does not turn the support into a "closed club" and genuinely helps new projects — it will work. If not — it will just be another pretty page on ton.org that will be deleted later.

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