The TON Foundation, which supports The Open Network (TON), announced Wednesday that it will soon launch TON Teleport BTC, a trustless bridge designed to facilitate secure Bitcoin transfers to and from the Telegram-linked network.

The new system aims to allow Bitcoin holders to participate in decentralized finance (DeFi) activities on TON while maintaining the security of their original assets, the Foundation said.

TON Teleport BTC will enable users to engage with decentralized exchanges, lending platforms, and other DeFi applications within the TON ecosystem. The Foundation said that the process will be entirely trustless and transparent, operating without a centralized issuer.

“All transactions are executed via smart contracts and verified by TON blockchain validators,” said Anatoliy Makosov, TON’s technical lead, in a release. “Storing and using Bitcoin on TON is as secure as on the Bitcoin network itself, but significantly cheaper and more convenient.”

According to the foundation, each Bitcoin on TON will be fully backed by actual Bitcoin, pegged through the teleport process to ensure secure and reliable transactions.

The Open Network is closely aligned with popular messaging app Telegram, as the messaging platform uses TON for ad revenue sharing payments with channel owners and other purposes. Telegram originally created TON internally before abandoning the project in 2020 amid regulatory scrutiny, with development continuing externally via a community of builders.

TON has seen surging attention and a rise in its token price this year amid that increasing embrace from Telegram itself, along with a crypto gaming boom that has yielded hits with Telegram-based games like Notcoin and Hamster Kombat.

Editor’s note: This article was written with the assistance of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.