📖 Chapter III : TON Grant

At the end of spring, we developed the NFT marketplace (riverstyx.io). This project came out by accident. We were interested in how NFT smart-contracs work on the TON Blockchain. In the end, we put together a working version in a week and returned to what we originally wanted.

Our heart has always been in GameDev. I have been working for different companies as a Producer / Lead Game Designer for over 5 years. And our goal has always been the creation of the Metaverse. But such projects require capital, and not a small one.

We had a plan. We had 30k$ and I decided that we would do bootstrap (when you start developing a project with the expectation of attracting investments in the future). At that time, we had the capital, skill and experience to build a Metaverse MVP with one small city. We assembled a small team of 5 people and started developing. Along the way, I began to develop us towards investments. Create contacts with a large number of investors and venture capital funds. We also applied for TON Grant. Because in general, I am personally in love with TON technology and especially with the structure of NFT smart-contracts. But that's another story.

TON Grant: We applied for TON Grant, and just a few days later Justin Hyun (TON incubation lead) contacted me. We met and agreed to make the first call. At that time, we had already built the first city and named it "TON City". And the M.O.N.T is a name of the Metaverse itself. We also developed the main mechanics of character control, applications for the city and prepared the mechanics of racing.

We do our first call with Justin Hyun and it lasts for an hour. He didn't even believe that the graphics we showed on the video were possible. But if you know what to do and you have a lot of experience in all this, then it does not seem too difficult. I really liked Justin, and he liked our project. We discussed our metaverse / game and the market in general, after which we agreed to make a call him and Steve Yun as the second stage of the TON Grant.

Call with Steve Yun and Justin Hyun: On the second call, the same thing happened, Justin and I talked about our projects together. We talked about our collection, NFR Marketplace and of course we talked about the game and have already shown MVP and walked on the stream through "TON City" with basic game mechanics. We moved on the same wavelength and decided to schedule the 3rd call with Mark Chadwick (TONfund).

Call with Mark Chadwick and @tonkongz. During the call with Mark, we already talked in more depth about the project, where I told him in detail the idea and structure of the game. And we started talking in detail about investments, shares and where the company will be based. After that, we agreed (or rather Justin promised) that we would call 12 funds. huobi, kucoin, tonfund etc. In general, the list includes everyone who has already looked in the direction of TON and the TON Foundation itself has published about cooperation with them.

I was very happy with this turn of events, and I was already looking forward to start to work faster and assemble a team. Start serious development on all fronts. The first days after the phone call, we talked with Justin, discussed the potential of the project and other games on the market. But everything began to drag on and Justin stopped fulfilling his promises. After some time, he wrote to me that we would not organize a call with funds.

I didn't understand it at the time. But it was necessary to move and I continued to look for investments in other places. I asked him to publish about us in the TON Foundation. And he seemed ready to help, but again he did nothing. He also promised to publish a post about us on the TON Society that we applied for a grant, but he didn’t do that either.

At some point, we made a full-fledged MVP with a server and multiplayer, and I invited him to test it with us and play, but again he was refused.

I don't know who Justin Hyun is. I found him to be an interesting, pleasant guy. But it seems that he does not understand what he is doing at all. Does the grant program even have a strategy, why is it needed on TON? Help is not visible. It’s also scary that different scammers help with its design.

Summing up Justin Hyun (@tonkongz):

📍 Promised to introduce us to funds - did not fulfill. 📍Promised to help us with promotion and publication on the TON Foundation - did not fulfill 📍 He promised to publish an article about us in the TON Society - he did not fulfill it. 📍Invited him to take part in the MVP session - refused

I don't know about other projects, but it doesn't look like the person who has to look after the ecosystem and be responsible for its development as a whole is moving things forward. I don't understand the grant strategy, and I also don't understand if it works in general. Passive waiting game? Instead of capturing the crypto market and bringing TON to the first positions in the world.

Questions: 📍Why didn't Justin Hyun arrange a phone call with investment funds? 📍What is the global goal of the TON Foundation for 1, 3, 5 years? How do they see themselves? and how is the grant strategy and the development of early stage startups built in accordance with this? 📍TON Decided to play centralized development and act according to the principle - we will do everything ourselves? 📍Want to steal the best ideas/products?

⌛To continue…