Gram (GRAM) is the coin of The Open Network, the blockchain built into Telegram. Until June 2026 it was called Toncoin. This guide explains what it is, where it came from, how it works and what could go wrong, in plain English.
Toncoin · TON → Gram · GRAM since 15 June 2026. Same coin. No swap needed.
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Three names get mixed up constantly. Sorting them out first makes everything else on this page easier.
Ticker GRAM. The native coin of the network. You pay fees with it, stake it and send it to people.
The old name, ticker TON. Every Toncoin became a Gram on 15 June 2026. It is the same coin.
The Open Network. This name did not change. Gram is the coin; TON is the network it runs on.
A fast proof-of-stake blockchain designed in 2018 by Telegram's founders, with a coin that works inside the Telegram app.
Paying network fees, staking to secure the network, and paying for things in Telegram: ads, usernames, gifts and services in Mini Apps.
Around 400 independent validators. Since May 2026 Telegram itself leads development and is the largest validator. Its chief executive, Pavel Durov, sets the direction.
Telegram has about a billion users. No other blockchain has a consumer app of that size as its front door. Since autumn 2026 the app has its own Gram Wallet.
On 1 June 2026 Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced that Toncoin would go back to the name it had in the project's first whitepaper: Gram. He described it as “returning to our roots”, and presented it as step four of a seven-step plan nicknamed “Make TON Great Again”.
A vote of token holders on the TON Vote platform ran from 1 to 8 June and passed with 81.22% of participating voting power in favour. The change took effect at 12:00 UTC on 15 June 2026.
It was a change of label only. There was no new token, no new contract and no migration. Gram is the network's built-in coin, so there was nothing to swap. Balances, addresses, staking positions, NFTs and DeFi positions stayed exactly as they were. Supply did not change.
Exchanges relabelled balances one-to-one on their own schedules. KuCoin finished on 16 June. Binance removed its TON pairs on 30 June and opened GRAM trading on 2 July. Binance.US listed GRAM on 6 August. The official guidance asked platforms to show “Gram (prev. Toncoin)” for about three months, which is why you still see that wording in places.
If you held Toncoin, you already hold Gram. You do not need to do anything. Any site, bot or message that asks you to swap, migrate, claim or “connect your wallet to receive GRAM” is a scam. The official TON channel said the same thing when the vote opened.
Before the rename, an unrelated community token on TON was already trading under the GRAM name, and a few other small tokens use lookalike names such as GRM. These are separate assets worth a tiny fraction of the native coin. On data sites the real one is usually labelled “Gram (prev. Toncoin)” and sits among the largest cryptocurrencies by market value. Check that before you buy.
Pavel and Nikolai Durov founded Telegram in 2013 after building VK, Russia's largest social network. By 2017 they wanted a payment system that could keep up with a messenger used by hundreds of millions of people, and concluded that existing blockchains were too slow. Nikolai, a mathematician and competitive-programming champion, designed a new one from scratch. The whitepaper called it the Telegram Open Network. Its coin was the Gram.
To pay for it, Telegram sold rights to future Grams to private investors in early 2018. Two rounds brought in about $1.7 billion from roughly 170 buyers, among them well-known venture capital firms. There was never a public sale.
On 11 October 2019, weeks before the network was due to launch, the US Securities and Exchange Commission went to court in New York. It argued that the Gram sale was an unregistered securities offering, because the investors were expected to resell their coins to the public. On 24 March 2020 Judge P. Kevin Castel agreed and issued a preliminary injunction that blocked delivery of Grams anywhere in the world.
On 12 May 2020 Pavel Durov announced that Telegram's involvement was over. In June, Telegram settled: it returned about $1.22 billion to investors and paid an $18.5 million penalty, without admitting or denying the allegations.
The code was open source, and a test network was still running. A small group of developers, led by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelianenko and calling themselves NewTON, kept it going. They renamed the project The Open Network, dropping “Telegram”, and called the coin Toncoin to put distance between it and the court case. In 2021 Telegram's team handed over the ton.org domain and the code repository, and NewTON became the TON Foundation, a non-profit based in Switzerland.
Since no coins had been sold or handed out, the starting supply of 5 billion was placed in special smart contracts that anyone could mine from using ordinary proof of work. That mining ran from mid-2020 until June 2022. How fairly it worked out is still argued about; see tokenomics.
In September 2023 Telegram publicly endorsed TON and began building a wallet into the app. In early 2024 it started paying channel owners their share of ad revenue in Toncoin, and Tether launched USDT on the network. A wave of tap-to-earn games in mid-2024 brought hundreds of millions of people into contact with TON, though most left when the giveaways ended. In January 2025 TON became the only blockchain that Telegram Mini Apps are allowed to use.
In spring 2026 Durov dropped the arm's-length arrangement altogether. Over three months Telegram shipped a major speed upgrade, cut fees, announced it would replace the TON Foundation as the network's main driver and become its largest validator, and restored the coin's original name. Six years after a US court stopped Telegram from launching Gram, Telegram is once again leading a coin called Gram. What changed is the regulatory climate in the United States and the fact that the network has been running publicly for years.
Filter by theme. The 2026 filter shows this year's changes on their own.
Brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who earlier built the Russian social network VK, launch the Telegram messenger.
Telegram's team starts designing its own blockchain. Nikolai Durov writes the technical design for what is called the Telegram Open Network, with a native coin named Gram.
Telegram sells rights to future Grams in two private rounds to roughly 170 investors, raising about $1.7 billion. There is no public sale.
Weeks before the planned launch, the US Securities and Exchange Commission files an emergency action in New York, arguing the Gram sale was an unregistered securities offering.
Judge P. Kevin Castel grants a preliminary injunction that stops Telegram from delivering Grams to buyers anywhere in the world.
Pavel Durov publishes a post announcing that Telegram's active involvement with TON is over.
Telegram agrees to return about $1.22 billion to investors and pay an $18.5 million civil penalty, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations.
Open-source developers led by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelianenko, working as NewTON, keep running and developing the network Telegram left behind.
Almost all of the 5 billion starting supply is placed in “giver” smart contracts that anyone can mine from with proof of work. The last coins are mined in June 2022.
The network is renamed The Open Network, the coin becomes Toncoin, and Telegram's team hands the ton.org domain and code repository to the community-run TON Foundation.
The @wallet bot lets people send Toncoin to each other inside Telegram.
Telegram usernames (and later anonymous numbers) are auctioned for Toncoin on the Fragment marketplace.
Validators vote to freeze 171 inactive early-miner wallets holding about 1.08 billion coins, roughly a fifth of supply, for 48 months.
At Token2049 in Singapore, Telegram names TON its network of choice for Web3 and begins rolling out a self-custodial wallet inside the app, outside the United States.
Telegram says channel owners will receive their share of advertising revenue in Toncoin.
Tether launches native USDT on TON. Supply passes $500 million within months.
Notcoin launches its token in May, followed by DOGS in August and Hamster Kombat in September. Hundreds of millions of people try Telegram mini-games. Most of that activity fades once the airdrops end.
Toncoin reaches a record of about $8.25.
Durov is detained at Paris–Le Bourget airport and, four days later, placed under formal investigation on charges relating to criminal activity on Telegram. He denies wrongdoing. The same week, heavy traffic from the DOGS airdrop halts block production on TON twice.
Telegram and the TON Foundation announce that TON will be the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for Telegram Mini Apps. Manuel Stotz becomes TON Foundation president, succeeding Steve Yun.
MoonPay co-founder Maximilian Crown is named chief executive of the TON Foundation, and later president when Stotz steps down.
A self-custodial TON wallet becomes available to Telegram's roughly 87 million US users.
Nasdaq-listed Verb Technology raises $558 million in a deal led by Kingsway Capital and renames itself TON Strategy Company, with Manuel Stotz as executive chairman.
Coins locked in the Believers Fund begin unlocking, at roughly 37 million per month over 36 months. Tokenised US stocks (xStocks) come to the wallet in Telegram.
French investigators fully lift the travel restrictions on Durov. The investigation itself remains open.
A consensus upgrade cuts block time from about 2.5 seconds to about 400 milliseconds and finality to roughly one second. Durov frames it as step one of a seven-step plan nicknamed “Make TON Great Again” (MTONGA).
Validators approve a fixed base fee of about 0.00039 coins per transfer, around $0.0005.
Durov announces that Telegram will replace the TON Foundation as the main driving force behind TON and become its largest validator. The Foundation is not dissolved.
A bridge connected to the TON ecosystem is exploited for about $2.85 million; a substantial part is later reported recovered.
Durov proposes renaming Toncoin to Gram, the name in the first whitepaper. A token-holder vote opens on the TON Vote platform.
The rename is approved with 81.22% of participating voting power in favour.
At 12:00 UTC the name and ticker change from Toncoin (TON) to Gram (GRAM). Nothing moves on-chain: no swap, no migration, no claim. The network is still called TON.
After removing its TON pairs on 30 June, Binance opens GRAM deposits and spot trading. Other exchanges, including KuCoin and MEXC, had already relabelled balances one-to-one.
Durov says Telegram will bring a self-custodial Gram wallet to every Telegram app, with instant, zero-fee transfers.
Russia's security service charges Durov with assisting terrorist activity and places him on a wanted list, according to Interfax and Reuters. He says it is retaliation for refusing surveillance and censorship demands.
The US affiliate opens GRAM deposits and trading on the TON network.
Durov says a native, self-custodial Gram Wallet inside Telegram is ready and open to a select group, with the smart contract approved by validators.
The older wallet mini-app, run by The Open Platform, is renamed Walt and repositioned as a separate trading and investing app.
Telegram widens access to its native wallet (shown in the app as a “Money” section) beyond the initial test group.
Most blockchains are a single queue: every transaction waits in the same line. TON was designed as many queues that split and merge as needed, tied together by one coordinating chain.
Raise the load to watch the workchain split into more shards. Then send a message and follow it from one shard to another.
Simplified model. The real network decides when to split and merge based on how full recent blocks are.
A single chain that holds the network's settings, the list of validators and their stakes, and a fingerprint of the latest block from every shard. Once a shard block is referenced here, it is final.
Under the masterchain there can be up to 232 workchains, each with its own rules. In practice nearly everything today runs on one, known as the basechain.
Each workchain is cut into shards that handle different groups of accounts in parallel. When a shard's blocks fill up it splits in two; when traffic drops, neighbours merge. This is what lets capacity grow with demand.
Every account on TON is a smart contract, including ordinary wallets. Contracts talk by sending messages. A message to a contract in another shard is routed there and handled in a later block. Developers call this asynchronous, and it is the biggest difference from Ethereum, where a transaction finishes entirely or not at all.
Validators lock up Gram as collateral and take turns producing blocks using a consensus protocol called Catchain, designed by Nikolai Durov. There were between about 380 and 420 validators during 2026. The protocol minimum stake is 300,000 GRAM, though in practice about a million is needed. Validators that perform badly are fined.
The April 2026 upgrade cut the time between blocks from roughly 2.5 seconds to about 0.4 seconds, and the time to finality from around ten seconds to about one.
Smart contracts run on the TVM. They are written in Tolk (the recommended language today), the older FunC, or the higher-level Tact. Ethereum's Solidity contracts cannot run here without being rewritten.
Tokens other than Gram are called jettons. Each holder's balance lives in its own small contract, which fits the sharded design. USDT on TON is a jetton. Telegram usernames and collectible gifts are NFTs.
About the speed claims. In a 2023 public test on hundreds of servers, audited by CertiK, the network processed just over 100,000 transactions per second. That shows what the design can do under ideal conditions. Day-to-day use in 2026 has been in the range of tens of transactions per second, with a few million transactions per day. The network has also had real outages: in August 2024, traffic from the DOGS airdrop stopped block production twice, once for more than six hours.
About 5.2 billion Gram exist. Only a little over half of them trade freely. Tap a segment to see what it is.
Approximate figures for autumn 2026 from CoinGecko data as cited by Coin Bureau, and CoinShares. Trackers disagree on what counts as circulating.
There is no hard cap. Validators are paid in newly created coins. Move the sliders to see how the total grows at a steady rate. This is arithmetic, not a forecast.
Starts from 5.24 billion. Before the 2026 speed upgrade, net inflation was about 0.6% a year. Because rewards are paid per block and blocks now come about six times faster, analysts projected about 3.6% unless rewards per block were reduced. A proposal to cut them was put to validators in mid-2026; we could not confirm the current rate, so check a live dashboard.
The initial supply was distributed by proof-of-work mining from “giver” contracts between 2020 and 2022. The Foundation has described this as an open and fair launch. Critics point out that few people knew the network existed at the time, and independent on-chain analyses have claimed that a large majority of those coins went to a small group of connected addresses. The 2023 freeze and the voluntary lock-ups that followed were, in part, a response to that concern. They postponed the issue; they did not remove it.
Gram's direction is set, to an unusual degree, by one person. This is a profile of Telegram's founder and chief executive, drawn from the public record and his own statements. It covers his career, not his private life.
Pavel Valeryevich Durov was born in Leningrad in 1984, the son of a professor of classical philology. He spent much of his childhood in Turin, Italy, where his father worked, before the family returned to Russia. He studied at the Academy Gymnasium in St Petersburg and then read English and translation in the philology faculty of St Petersburg State University, graduating in 2006. As a student he built an online forum for the university, which turned out to be a rehearsal for something much larger.
In 2006, aged 22, Durov launched VKontakte (VK), a social network modelled loosely on the early Facebook. His older brother Nikolai, a mathematician and champion competitive programmer, built much of the engineering. VK overtook its rivals within two years and became the biggest social network in the Russian-speaking world.
Its size brought pressure. During the protests that followed Russia's December 2011 parliamentary election, Durov publicly refused a request from the security service to close opposition groups on VK. In 2013 he sold his 12% stake. In April 2014 he said he had also refused to hand over the personal data of Ukrainian protest organisers, explaining later that doing so would have been a betrayal of VK's Ukrainian users. He was dismissed as chief executive on 21 April 2014, by which point, he said, the company was under the control of allies of the Kremlin. He left Russia and told reporters he had no plans to go back.
Telegram launched in August 2013, while the fight over VK was still running. Nikolai designed its encryption protocol, MTProto; Pavel supplied the money and the product direction. The company was briefly based in Berlin and moved around before settling in Dubai in 2017.
Telegram is run in an unusual way for a service of its size. Durov has said its core engineering team is only a few dozen people, that it has no conventional human-resources department, and that he acts as its product manager himself. Engineers are often recruited through programming contests. He says he remains the company's only shareholder, which means there is no board of outside investors to overrule him.
Durov was born a Soviet and then Russian citizen. He acquired citizenship of St Kitts and Nevis in 2013 through its investment programme, and of the United Arab Emirates and France in 2021. The French naturalisation went through a rarely used procedure and was described by Le Monde as mysterious. It later mattered: it was France that arrested him.
Grows up partly in Turin, Italy.
Finishes at St Petersburg State University; VKontakte opens the same autumn.
The first open clash with Russian authorities.
Built with Nikolai Durov.
Leaves Russia.
The original Gram sale, to private investors only.
After losing to the SEC in a New York court.
First bonds sold; ads and Premium follow.
Placed under formal investigation four days later.
The investigation stays open.
Speed upgrade, fee cut, Telegram as lead validator, rename to Gram.
First users get it on 31 August.
Accused of assisting terrorism; he rejects the charge.
In April 2018 a Russian court ordered Telegram blocked after the company refused to give the security service the means to read users' messages. The block was widely evaded and was lifted in June 2020. Relations have since worsened again. During 2026 Russia restricted and fined Telegram while promoting a state-backed messenger, and on 29 July 2026 the security service charged Durov with assisting terrorist activity and put him on a wanted list, according to Interfax and Reuters. Durov says the label is punishment for refusing demands for mass surveillance and censorship.
The original Telegram Open Network was Nikolai's design and Pavel's fundraising. In early 2018 Telegram sold rights to future Grams to about 170 private investors for roughly $1.7 billion. The US Securities and Exchange Commission sued in October 2019. Durov gave sworn testimony in the case, and Telegram argued that Grams would be a currency, not an investment. The court disagreed in March 2020. On 12 May 2020 Durov published an essay ending Telegram's involvement, and in it criticised the reach of US courts over the rest of the world's financial choices. Telegram returned about $1.22 billion and paid an $18.5 million penalty. The full story is in origins.
On 24 August 2024 Durov was arrested at Paris–Le Bourget airport after landing on a private jet. On 28 August investigating judges placed him under formal investigation on a list of alleged offences that centre on complicity in crimes committed by Telegram users, including the distribution of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking, and on refusing to answer lawful requests from the authorities. He was released on bail of €5 million, ordered to report to police twice a week and barred from leaving France.
Being placed under formal investigation is not a conviction and does not mean a trial will follow. Durov denies wrongdoing. He has called the arrest legally and logically absurd, and argued that prosecuting a chief executive for what users do on a platform is the wrong tool. His lawyers contest the legality of the case.
The conditions were loosened in stages. He was allowed to travel to Dubai temporarily from March 2025, questioned by the judges several times, and on 13 November 2025 the travel restrictions were lifted in full. In a post marking two years since the arrest, in August 2026, he wrote that the investigation was “still ongoing” and suggested it was politically motivated. As far as we could verify in October 2026, no trial date has been set and no charges have been dropped or proven.
Telegram did change after the arrest. In September 2024 it updated its terms to say it can give users' IP addresses and phone numbers to authorities in response to valid legal requests, and in December 2024 it joined the Internet Watch Foundation's programme for detecting child abuse imagery. French officials have been reported as saying co-operation improved.
Durov's public philosophy has been consistent for fifteen years: private communication is a right, platforms should not hand user data to governments, and he would sooner lose a market than comply with an order he considers censorship. He describes Telegram as a neutral platform, not a player in geopolitics. He also promotes an ascetic personal regime in public, and has said he owns no property, jets or yachts.
Critics accept that he has paid real costs for these positions, in Russia in particular, and still argue that “neutrality” has sometimes meant doing too little about harmful content.
“I would rather be free than to take orders from anyone.”
“We're bringing a native non-custodial Gram wallet to every Telegram app!”
“In the end, freedom and truth will prevail.”
Quotes are short extracts. The full posts are linked in sources.
Durov says he is Telegram's sole shareholder. Bondholders have lent the company money but have no say in how it is run. His wealth is therefore mostly a guess about what Telegram is worth. Forbes put it at about $6.6 billion in March 2026, well below its estimates of more than $15 billion in earlier years. Treat any single figure with caution.
For most of its life Telegram earned nothing and was paid for by Durov. That changed after 2021, when it began selling bonds and then introduced advertising and paid Premium subscriptions.
This matters to Gram holders for one reason. Telegram's income is tied to the coin: it has held it, sold it and been paid in it. That gives Telegram a strong motive to support Gram, and it means Telegram's own accounts move with Gram's price.
Between 2020 and 2023 Durov kept his distance from the network. From late 2023 he edged back, and in 2026 he took over openly, announcing each move on his own channel:
Three of the seven steps are still unnamed. See the roadmap.
Why this profile is here. When one person announces the upgrades, the name, the wallet and the timetable, that person is part of what you are assessing. That is a strength when he delivers and a risk if he is distracted, restricted or wrong. See risks.
Researchers, police forces and child-safety groups have long said Telegram was too slow to act against criminal channels, and that its small staff could not moderate a service of its size. This is the heart of the French case. Durov's reply is that Telegram removes millions of harmful items, that its moderation is no worse than that of other large platforms, and that it now publishes more about what it removes. Both the criticism and the post-2024 improvements are documented.
Telegram markets itself on privacy, but ordinary chats and all groups are not end-to-end encrypted. They are stored on Telegram's servers, encrypted in a way Telegram itself could technically undo. Only opt-in “secret chats” are end-to-end encrypted. Cryptographers have criticised this for years, along with the choice of a home-made protocol. Durov argues the design is what makes fast multi-device sync possible and that Telegram has never disclosed message contents.
Durov presents himself as an exile from the Russian state. In 2024 the outlet iStories reported, from leaked border records, that he visited Russia more than 50 times between 2015 and 2021. His spokesman said he had never hidden such trips and lived mainly abroad. Western officials have at times voiced suspicion about Telegram's exposure to Russia; Russia, for its part, has banned the app once, restricted it again and in 2026 charged him with a terrorism offence. The evidence does not point neatly in either direction.
Durov has several times accused Western intelligence services of asking Telegram for political favours, including a 2025 claim that French intelligence asked him to silence conservative voices ahead of an election in Romania. France's foreign intelligence service denied it. These claims rest on his word and have not been independently confirmed.
Durov is the sole owner of the app, the public face of the network and the source of nearly every market-moving announcement about Gram, usually made on his own channel without advance notice. The price has jumped on several of his posts. Critics see a conflict between running a company that holds and sells the coin and steering the network it runs on. Supporters say his involvement is the reason the network has a billion-user front door at all.
A US court found that Telegram's first Gram sale broke securities law. Investors got most, not all, of their money back. In 2026 Telegram is again leading a coin called Gram. The legal structure is different this time, since the coin has traded freely for years and was never sold by Telegram in a public offering, but the history is why some lawyers still watch it closely.
Durov is the chief executive of Telegram, which makes the Gram Wallet. The companies behind the other wallets have their own leaders, and they are not Telegram employees.
A former senior VK executive who worked with Durov there. His company built the original @wallet bot and now runs Walt. In September 2026 he said the product had grown from a simple tool for buying Toncoin and Bitcoin into a full trading platform.
Runs the non-profit that coordinated TON until Telegram took the lead in May 2026. It still holds funds and coins.
Separate companies with their own management. Their wallets work on TON whatever Telegram decides. More in people and organisations.
Raised the money for the original project in 2018, stepped away in 2020, and in 2026 put Telegram back in charge. He announces most major changes on his own Telegram channel. Under formal investigation in France since August 2024; he denies the charges. Full profile.
Pavel's older brother. A mathematician who wrote the original TON whitepaper and designed its sharding, virtual machine and Catchain consensus.
Led the volunteer developers who kept the network alive after Telegram left in 2020, and has headed its core development team since.
Co-led the community revival with Makosov and remains one of the network's main engineers.
Led the Foundation through the 2023–2024 growth period and the Telegram endorsement. Succeeded as president by Manuel Stotz in January 2025.
An early and large investor in TON. President of the TON Foundation from January 2025, then executive chairman of TON Strategy Company.
Co-founder of the payments company MoonPay. Took over as chief executive, and later president, of the Foundation.
A former VK executive and early TON Foundation figure. His company builds Walt, the wallet mini-app formerly called Wallet in Telegram.
A private company based in Dubai. The main driving force behind TON and its largest validator. Legally separate from the network: Gram holders have no claim on Telegram's equity or revenue.
The Swiss non-profit that coordinated the network from 2021. It still exists and holds funds and coins, but its future role has not been clearly defined since Telegram took over.
The team of developers who maintain the node software, consensus and smart-contract tooling.
The company behind Walt. Valued at about $1 billion in a 2025 funding round.
A Nasdaq-listed company (ticker TONX, formerly Verb Technology) that raised $558 million in 2025 to buy and stake the coin. It held about 217 million coins in early 2026, nearly all staked.
In March 2025 the TON Foundation said venture firms including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Benchmark and Kingsway held more than $400 million of Toncoin between them. Pantera Capital disclosed a large investment in 2024.
TON's activity is unusual: much of it happens inside one messaging app, and a lot of it is payments and collectibles, not trading.
Telegram's own self-custodial Gram Wallet began rolling out in late August 2026. The older wallet mini-app became Walt in September and now focuses on trading. Details in the Gram Wallet section and the wallets guide.
Web apps that open inside a chat: games, shops, trading tools. Since 2025, any Mini App that uses a blockchain must use TON and connect through TON Connect.
Telegram's in-app currency for digital goods, bought through Apple and Google. Stars are not crypto, but developers and creators can cash them out in Gram.
Tether's dollar stablecoin has run natively on TON since April 2024. About $600–650 million of it was in circulation in mid-2026, around 80% of all stablecoins on the network.
Fragment is the marketplace where Telegram usernames, anonymous numbers and collectible gifts are traded for Gram. Gifts became tradable NFTs in 2025 and are one of the network's busiest uses.
Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, Catizen and DOGS drew enormous crowds in 2024 by rewarding taps with tokens. The format faded fast once airdrops ended, and wallet activity fell with it.
The main exchanges, lending market and liquid staking protocol. DeFi on TON is small: roughly $50–90 million locked during 2026, down from about $740–800 million at the 2024 peak.
Tokenised US stocks (xStocks) reached Telegram's wallet in late 2025. Walt now lists more than a hundred tokenised stocks, ETFs and metals in supported regions.
Parts of the original whitepaper that shipped: readable .ton names, decentralised file storage and a privacy proxy layer. They work but see far less use than payments.
A confidential AI computing network announced by Durov, in which GPU owners are paid in the coin to run AI workloads privately. Launched in late 2025.
Since 2024, owners of public Telegram channels receive half of the ad revenue from their channels, paid on TON.
Roughly 2 to 4 million transactions a day, about 2 million monthly active wallets and some 450 monthly active developers, according to figures collected by CoinShares and Coin Bureau.
In April 2026 Pavel Durov began publishing a seven-step plan on his Telegram channel. Four steps are done. He has not officially named the last three.
Catchain 2.0: blocks about every 0.4 seconds, finality in about one second.
A fixed base fee of about 0.00039 GRAM, roughly six times lower than before.
Telegram replaces the TON Foundation as the main driver and becomes the largest validator.
Toncoin is renamed Gram after a holder vote.
The native wallet opened to a test group on 31 August 2026 and access was widened in October. Durov has said future upgrades will not require users to move funds. See the Gram Wallet.
Durov says Telegram has applied for the .gram top-level domain. If ICANN approves, users could get names like yourname.gram. Approval is not guaranteed and takes time.
Press reports around the takeover mentioned upgraded in-app payments, new developer tools and a Bitcoin liquidity bridge among the likely next steps. Telegram has not confirmed which of these are steps five to seven.
The Open Platform says Walt will add crypto payment cards and AI-assisted trading in stages. These are company products, not network upgrades.
Durov has talked about instant, zero-fee transfers for Telegram users. The Gram Wallet is described as offering this for transfers inside Telegram.
The 48-month freeze on about 1.08 billion early-miner coins is due to end. What validators and holders decide before then is one of the biggest open questions for the coin.
Approximate figures for 2026. All four networks change often, so treat this as orientation, not a scoreboard.
| Gram / TON | Solana (SOL) | Ethereum (ETH) | Tron (TRX) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Launched | Designed 2018; community network from 2020–21 | 2020 | 2015 | 2018 |
| Design | Many chains: masterchain, workchains, shards that split and merge | One very fast chain | One base chain plus many layer-2 networks | One chain |
| Consensus | Proof of stake (Catchain 2.0) | Proof of stake with proof of history | Proof of stake | Delegated proof of stake |
| Block time | About 0.4 seconds | About 0.4 seconds | 12 seconds | 3 seconds |
| Finality | About 1 second | Seconds | About 13 minutes | About a minute |
| Typical transfer fee | About $0.0005, fixed | Fractions of a cent | Cents to dollars, varies with demand | Low, but USDT transfers often cost a dollar or more |
| Who validates | About 400 validators; Telegram is the largest | Several hundred to about a thousand validators | Around a million validator keys, many operators | 27 elected “super representatives” |
| Smart contracts | TVM; Tolk, FunC, Tact; asynchronous | Rust programs | EVM; Solidity | EVM-compatible; Solidity |
| DeFi size | Small: tens of millions of dollars locked | Large: billions | Largest: tens of billions | Large: billions |
| Stablecoins | Under $1 billion, mostly USDT | Many billions | The largest base of all | Tens of billions of USDT; its main use |
| Main strength | Distribution through Telegram's billion users | Speed and an active trading scene | Deepest liquidity and developer base | Cheap, established dollar transfers |
| Main weakness | Depends on one company; thin DeFi; large locked supply | Past outages; hardware demands | Slow and costly base layer; fragmented layer 2s | Concentrated control |
In 2026 Telegram added its own crypto wallet to the messenger. It is new, it is still rolling out, and some details have not been published. This section separates what is confirmed from what is only reported.
The Gram Wallet is a crypto wallet that is part of the Telegram app itself. There is nothing extra to download and no bot to start. It holds Gram on the TON blockchain and is meant for everyday use: sending Gram to people you chat with, and paying for things inside Telegram.
It is self-custodial, also written non-custodial. The keys that control the coins belong to you, not to Telegram. Telegram cannot move your coins, freeze them or reverse a payment. The other side of that is that Telegram cannot rescue you if you lose access.
On 21 July 2026 Durov announced it with the words “a native non-custodial Gram wallet to every Telegram app” and promised instant, zero-fee transactions. On 31 August he said it was ready and open to a select group, to be widened gradually. On 9 October access was extended beyond that first group. Not every account has it yet.
Durov and most of the press call it the Gram Wallet. Inside the app, reports and the Walt team say the section is labelled Money. They are the same product. This guide uses Gram Wallet.
One more source of confusion: app stores also carry standalone apps with “Gram Wallet” in their names, from other developers. Some are legitimate wallets and some are not, but none of them is the wallet inside Telegram. The real one is only ever found inside the official Telegram app.
Confirmed by Telegram, Walt or both:
Not confirmed when we checked in October 2026: whether it holds USDT or other tokens, and whether it offers swaps, staking or buying with a bank card. Early coverage describes a wallet that handles Gram and Telegram's own digital items and little else. For anything more, Telegram points people to Walt or to an independent wallet. If your app shows more than this, the rollout has moved on since we wrote this.
Telegram describes transfers inside Telegram as free and instant. It has not published how the network cost is covered. An ordinary transfer on TON costs about 0.00039 GRAM, around $0.0005, since the May 2026 fee cut, so the amount being absorbed is tiny either way. Assume that sending to an address outside Telegram, such as an exchange, may carry that normal network fee.
Use the official app from the App Store, Google Play or telegram.org. Do not install modified versions.
Open Settings. The wallet entry sits where “Wallet” used to be, reportedly labelled Money. According to Walt, the section also appears when someone sends you Gram.
Follow the on-screen setup. Do every backup step it offers. If it shows you recovery words, write them on paper and keep them away from your phone.
Receive Gram from a friend, top up from Walt, or withdraw from an exchange using the TON network. Start small.
Send a little to someone you trust and check that it arrives before moving more.
Pay for gifts, usernames, Stars or services in Telegram apps. Keep larger savings in a wallet you have backed up carefully, or on a hardware wallet.
Scam warnings. Telegram will never message you to ask for recovery words or a login code. There is no “early access” list, no activation fee and no airdrop for turning the wallet on. Accounts called “Gram Wallet Support” are fake. A screenshot of your recovery words in your photo gallery is not a backup; it is a risk. Because the wallet is one tap from your chats, treat any stranger who brings up money as a likely scammer.
Pick what you want to do. This is a guide to the tools, not a recommendation to buy anything.
Gram Wallet. Sending Gram to someone you already chat with is what it was built for. Telegram describes these transfers as instant and free.
This is the part with the least official detail. What is established: the wallet is self-custodial, and Durov says network validators approved the smart contract behind it, so that “future upgrades of the wallet won't require painful migrations”. In plain terms, Telegram should be able to improve the wallet without asking you to move your coins to a new address.
What is not fully documented is the backup method. Press coverage says recovery depends on a recovery phrase that only you hold, and that losing it means losing the coins. Telegram's earlier self-custodial wallet, launched in the United States in 2025, used a different approach that split the key between the Telegram account and an email address. We could not confirm from a primary source which method the Gram Wallet uses for every user. Follow the backup steps the app itself shows you at setup, and complete them before you put money in.
Telegram has not published a list of countries. Durov's stated aim is every Telegram app and more than a billion users. In practice access has arrived in stages, and local law may affect what is offered in some places. If you do not see it, the rollout has not reached your account. No link, bot or form can speed that up.
A wallet is not an account. Your Telegram login and your wallet keys are different things. Protect both: turn on two-step verification in Telegram, and never share a login code.
| Gram Wallet | Walt | Tonkeeper | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Made by | Telegram | The Open Platform, a separate company led by Andrew Rogozov | The independent Tonkeeper team |
| Where it lives | Inside the Telegram app, in Settings | A Telegram mini-app: search @walt or @wallet | Its own apps for iOS, Android, desktop and browser |
| Who holds the keys | You | Walt, for the main account. It also has a self-custodial option | You |
| Identity checks | None reported for setting it up | Yes, for the custodial account | None |
| Main purpose | Everyday payments and Telegram items | Buying, trading, earning, many assets | General-purpose TON wallet |
| Assets | Gram and Telegram collectibles. Other tokens not confirmed | 300+ assets on four blockchains, plus 100+ tokenised stocks, ETFs and metals, by its own count | Gram, jettons such as USDT, NFTs |
| Buy with a card | Not confirmed. Top up from Walt | Yes, in supported regions | Through third-party providers |
| Trading and staking | Not confirmed | Spot trading, earn products, perpetual futures | Swaps and staking built in |
| Fees | Described as free inside Telegram | Trading fees and spreads; free top-ups to Gram Wallet | Normal network fees, plus provider fees on swaps |
| If you lose access | Telegram cannot restore it. Depends on your own backup | Account recovery through the company for the custodial part | Only your recovery phrase can restore it |
| Can it be frozen? | Not by Telegram, by design | Yes, the custodial account can be restricted | No |
| Works with apps outside Telegram | Built for use inside Telegram | Partly | Yes, through TON Connect |
| Suits | Beginners and small everyday amounts | People who want to buy and trade without leaving Telegram | People who want full control and DeFi access |
Compiled in October 2026 from company statements and press coverage. “Not confirmed” means we found no primary source either way. The full line-up, including hardware wallets, is in the wallets guide.
The wallet that sat in Telegram's settings for years was never Telegram's. It was built by The Open Platform. On 28 September 2026 it was renamed Walt and moved out of settings to make room for Telegram's own. Existing Walt accounts, balances and addresses were unchanged and nothing had to be migrated.
Durov called the launch the largest rollout of a non-custodial wallet in history and said its aim is to make such wallets usable for ordinary people. That is his description. A wallet being available to a billion accounts is not the same as a billion people using it. More on him in the profile.
How fees are covered, the exact recovery design, which countries are excluded, whether other tokens will be supported, and how many people actually have it. Telegram has not published full documentation. Expect this section to change.
The wallet names changed in 2026 along with the coin. Here is the current line-up. Download only from official sites and app stores. Telegram's own new wallet has a section to itself.
Telegram's own native wallet, rolling out since late August 2026. It appears inside the app (reported as a “Money” section) and is designed for everyday Gram transfers and buying Telegram gifts, usernames and services. Telegram describes transfers as instant and free of network fees. Availability still depends on the staged rollout. Full guide to the Gram Wallet.
The long-running @wallet mini-app, renamed Walt on 28 September 2026 and run by The Open Platform. It now focuses on trading, earning and multi-chain assets, including tokenised stocks. Existing accounts and addresses carried over. Open it by searching @walt or @wallet in Telegram.
The most widely used independent TON wallet. Supports Gram, jettons such as USDT, NFTs, staking and connecting to apps through TON Connect.
An open-source wallet with a clean interface, built-in staking and swaps, and support for Ledger devices.
A mobile wallet from the Whales team, known for its staking pools and simple design.
Keeps your private keys on a physical device that never exposes them to the internet. Used together with an app such as Tonkeeper or MyTonWallet, or Ledger's own software.
A card-shaped hardware wallet that you tap against your phone. Supports the TON network.
A popular multi-chain wallet that supports the TON network alongside many other blockchains.
Leaving coins on the exchange where you bought them is the simplest option, but the exchange holds the keys. If it fails, freezes withdrawals or is hacked, you may not get your coins back.
Three habits that prevent most losses. Write your seed phrase on paper and never type it into a website or send it in a chat. When sending to an exchange, include the memo or comment if the exchange gives you one. Send a small test amount first when using a new address.
This is a description of how people buy it, not a recommendation to do so. Look for the ticker GRAM. If a platform still shows TON, it is behind on the rename.
A regulated exchange available in your country is the usual route. Inside Telegram, the Walt mini-app sells Gram by card in supported regions.
Exchanges and Walt's custodial account will ask for ID. This is normal and legally required in most countries.
Bank transfer is usually cheapest. Cards are faster and cost more.
Search for GRAM and check the full name reads Gram, often “Gram (prev. Toncoin)”. Make sure it is not one of the small lookalike tokens.
A simple “buy” screen is easiest. A limit order on the spot market usually costs less in fees.
You can leave it on the exchange or withdraw to your own wallet. If you withdraw, choose the TON network, double-check the address, and include a memo if the destination requires one.
Exchanges that had confirmed GRAM markets when we checked in October 2026:
Listings and regional availability change. Check the exchange itself. We have no relationship with any of them.
Before you buy anything: crypto prices can fall sharply and stay down. Gram is about 80% below its 2024 high. Nothing on this page is a recommendation.
A guide that only lists the good parts is an advert. These are the main concerns raised by analysts and critics.
Telegram now leads development, runs the largest validator and controls the main route to users. Pavel Durov announces the roadmap personally. If Telegram changes strategy, is restricted in major markets or loses interest, there is no comparable second pillar. Telegram is already blocked or limited in several countries.
Critics argue that having the dominant app also be the lead validator recreates the single point of control that blockchains are meant to avoid. Supporters reply that there are still around 400 validators and that Telegram's stake is a small share of the total. Both things are true. Influence over a network is not only a matter of stake.
The 81.22% figure describes the tokens that voted. By early counts those amounted to a few million coins out of about 2.7 billion in circulation. The result was clear, but it reflects a small slice of holders.
Roughly 37 million coins a month are unlocking from the Believers Fund until 2028, and about 1.08 billion frozen early-miner coins are due to unfreeze in February 2027. CoinShares has flagged this overhang as a central risk. More coins available to sell can weigh on price.
Independent analyses have claimed that most of the initial supply was mined by a small cluster of related addresses. The freezes and lock-ups were a response, not a resolution.
Durov remains under formal investigation in France, and in July 2026 Russia charged him with a terrorism offence, which he rejects. Telegram is once again closely tied to a coin called Gram, which is the position the SEC objected to in 2019, though under a very different US regulatory climate. Rules could change again, there or elsewhere.
A billion Telegram users is not a billion Gram users. Around two million wallets are active in a month. DeFi activity is a small fraction of its 2024 peak, and the tap-to-earn crowd largely left. After the fee cut, the network itself earns very little.
Faster blocks mean more block rewards unless rewards are reduced. Projections put inflation at about 3.6% a year after Catchain 2.0, up from about 0.6%. Check the current figure before making assumptions about staking returns.
The network stalled twice in August 2024. A bridge in the ecosystem was exploited for about $2.85 million in May 2026. TON's asynchronous contracts are harder to write safely than they look, and it has far fewer experienced auditors than Ethereum.
Telegram is full of fake support accounts, fake bots, malicious Mini Apps and counterfeit tokens. The rename added “claim your GRAM” and “migrate your TON” scams, plus lookalike tickers. No genuine service will ask for your seed phrase.
The coin peaked near $8.25 in June 2024, traded around $1.30 in spring 2026, roughly doubled in May on the Telegram news and then gave much of that back. It has been trading around $1.50 in early October 2026. Moves like these are normal for this asset.
Gram (GRAM) is the native cryptocurrency of The Open Network (TON), the blockchain originally designed by Telegram's founders and now built into the Telegram app; it pays network fees, secures the network through staking and is used for payments inside Telegram.
Yes. On 15 June 2026 Toncoin was renamed Gram and its ticker changed from TON to GRAM. It is the same coin on the same blockchain with the same balances and addresses. Only the name, ticker and logo changed.
No. The rename happened automatically. Wallets and exchanges simply relabelled existing balances one-to-one. Any website, bot or message asking you to swap, migrate, claim or connect a wallet to receive Gram is a scam.
Gram was the coin's name in Telegram's original 2018 whitepaper. Pavel Durov proposed restoring it on 1 June 2026 as the fourth step of a seven-step plan in which Telegram took back the leading role in TON. Token holders approved the change with 81.22% of participating votes.
No. The blockchain is still The Open Network, or TON. Gram is only the name of the coin.
No one owns the network; it is run by several hundred independent validators. But since May 2026 Telegram has been the main driving force behind TON's development and its largest single validator. Holding Gram gives you no share in Telegram the company or its revenue.
Yes, and this causes confusion. An older, unrelated community token on TON used the GRAM name before the rename, and other small tokens use similar names such as GRM. They are not the native coin. Check what you are buying by its market size and listing page, not by ticker alone.
After the Catchain 2.0 upgrade in April 2026, blocks are produced about every 0.4 seconds and transactions are final in about a second. Since May 2026 a basic transfer costs about 0.00039 GRAM, around $0.0005.
Total supply is about 5.2 billion, with around 2.7 to 2.8 billion in circulation as of autumn 2026. There is no fixed maximum: new coins are created to pay validators, and half of transaction fees are burned.
Yes. Running your own validator requires hundreds of thousands of coins and serious hardware, so most people stake through nominator pools or liquid staking protocols such as Tonstakers, or through an exchange or wallet that offers it. Rewards vary and staking carries smart-contract and price risk.
Gram trades under the ticker GRAM on most large exchanges, including Binance, Binance.US, Coinbase, Kraken, KuCoin, MEXC and Gate, and can be bought inside Telegram through the Walt mini-app in supported regions. Availability depends on where you live.
This site does not give investment advice or price predictions. Gram is a volatile asset that has fallen roughly 80% from its 2024 high, has significant scheduled token unlocks ahead, and depends heavily on one company. Read the risks section and only use money you can afford to lose.
The Gram Wallet is Telegram's own self-custodial crypto wallet, built into the app and shown as a Money section. It opened to a first group of users on 31 August 2026 and access was widened on 9 October 2026. Update the official Telegram app and look in Settings. If it is not there, the staged rollout has not reached your account yet, and no link, bot or payment can speed that up.
The Gram Wallet is made by Telegram, is self-custodial and is meant for everyday Gram payments and Telegram items such as gifts and usernames. Walt, formerly Wallet in Telegram, is made by a separate company, The Open Platform, and is a mini-app for buying, trading and earning across hundreds of assets, with a custodial account that requires identity checks. You can top up the Gram Wallet from Walt.
Pavel Durov is the founder, chief executive and, by his own account, sole owner of Telegram. Born in Leningrad in 1984, he built the Russian social network VK, lost control of it in 2014 and left Russia. He founded Telegram with his brother Nikolai in 2013. He raised the money for the original Gram project in 2018 and in 2026 put Telegram back in charge of TON.
Durov was arrested in August 2024 and placed under formal investigation on a dozen charges relating to activity on Telegram, which he denies. His travel restrictions were fully lifted in November 2025. As far as we could verify in October 2026, the investigation remained open and no trial had been scheduled.
Primary sources first, then research and reporting. Facts were checked in October 2026. If you spot an error, the fix belongs here.