"Yun Launches $100M TVM Ventures to Fuel TON's DeFi and PayFi Growth"

Former TON Foundation veteran Steve Yun has launched a new venture capital firm, TVM Ventures, with an inaugural fund of $100 million. Yun, who previously served as the president and is currently a board member of the TON Foundation, established TVM Ventures in November 2024 and began operations soon after.

TVM Ventures takes its name from the TON Virtual Machine and focuses on funding startups within the TON ecosystem, particularly in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and payment finance (PayFi) verticals. Yun and a Toncoin miner contributed to the fund's capital, with Yun declining to disclose the miner's identity or their specific contribution.

TVM Ventures targets seed-stage investments at valuations of $5 million to $10 million, taking a leading position with check sizes between $500,000 and $1 million. The firm also provides $5 million in "farming liquidity" to help protocols establish the minimum liquidity needed for their products to function. While its primary focus is early-stage investments, TVM may also invest smaller amounts in larger industry projects if they are strategic to building TON's ecosystem.

So far, TVM Ventures has invested in four TON-based startups: Factorial, a Morpho-like modular lending platform on TON; Torch Finance, a stablecoin swap platform on TON; Fiva, a Pendle-like tokenized yield platform on TON; and Memes Lab, a memepad on TON/Telegram that allows users to buy memecoins with Telegram Stars.

Yun expects major growth for TON's app ecosystem and total value locked by Q2 2025 with the launch of the tgBTC bridge and a DeFi incentive initiative from the TON Foundation. He predicts TON will capture major stablecoin market share within the next few years, attracting Tron-USDT users within 24 months and ETH-USDT users within 48 months. Yun anticipates the TON Foundation becoming more independent and efficient, making "high-impact deals" that strengthen the ecosystem. He also expects Toncoin, currently trading at around $4 with a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion, to surpass $40 in the next bull cycle, representing a 900% increase.

TVM Ventures is based in