Pavel Durov announced Sunday that Toncoin — the native currency of The Open Network blockchain — will be renamed Gram, restoring an identity that U.S. securities regulators effectively buried six years ago. The transition is expected to take approximately three weeks, and anyone who holds Toncoin today will hold Gram when it is complete.
"TON's native currency is becoming Gram," Durov wrote in a post shared with his tens of millions of followers. "Gram was the original name of TON's currency in the first white paper. We're returning to our roots — and starting a new chapter." The name of the underlying blockchain, The Open Network, will not change.
The announcement is the fourth step in a seven-part plan Durov has branded "Make TON Great Again" — or MTONGA — a structured campaign to push the network to the center of Telegram's billion-user ecosystem. Three steps remain, their contents not yet disclosed.
Gram: Name Buried by SEC, Now Restored
Gram began as the currency Telegram and its co-founders, Pavel and Nikolai Durov, designed in 2018 for what was then called the Telegram Open Network. The brothers raised $1.7 billion in two private presale rounds — at the time the second-largest token sale in history, behind only EOS — from 171 accredited investors. The original Gram was intended to serve as a payment rail embedded directly into Telegram's messaging interface, enabling hundreds of millions of users to transact without leaving the app.
That ambition ran into the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in October 2019, when regulators filed an emergency action arguing the Gram token sale constituted an unregistered securities offering. A federal court sided with the regulator in March 2020, and Durov shut down Telegram's involvement with the project two months later. In June 2020, Telegram settled with the SEC, returning $1.2 billion to investors and paying an $18.5 million civil penalty.
The name Gram went with it. An independent community of developers rebuilt the network under the name The Open Network, and the currency was renamed Toncoin in 2021. Until now.
Telegram's Return to TON, Step by Step
The Gram rename is the latest move in a roadmap Durov publicly launched in April 2026 with a technical upgrade called Catchain 2.0, which cut block production times from roughly 2.5 seconds to approximately 400 milliseconds, enabling sub-second transaction finality.
Steps two and three reduced fees sixfold — to roughly $0.0005 per transaction — and formalized Telegram as the network's largest validator, with the company staking 2.2 million Toncoin. Those announcements in early May sent Toncoin from approximately $1.37 to a peak of around $2.89 within days, pushing the token's market capitalization to roughly $7.6 billion and into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
The rename is step four. Steps five, six, and seven have not been announced.
What the Gram Rebrand Changes, and What It Doesn't
For most holders, the rename is a ticker and display change, not a technical event. The underlying blockchain — The Open Network — keeps its name, and the token's supply, utility, and smart-contract functions remain unchanged. Exchanges and wallets will need to update their listings, which is what the three-week transition period is expected to accommodate.
The symbolic dimension is harder to dismiss. When Durov shut down the original Gram project in 2020, he wrote to investors: "I want to conclude this post by wishing luck to all those striving for decentralization, balance and equality in the world." The restoration of the name under Telegram's direct stewardship is a statement that the vision deferred in 2020 is now operational.
Some observers have flagged a meaningful distinction: the chain Telegram now controls is not identical in legal structure to the one the SEC halted. The 2020 enforcement action targeted Telegram itself as the central promoter of a security. What exists today is a community-built, proof-of-stake blockchain that Telegram has rejoined as the largest validator — a structurally different relationship, though legal analysts note that Telegram's formal re-entry in 2026 invites renewed scrutiny from regulators who previously required the company to notify them of future digital offerings. The current U.S. regulatory environment for digital assets is materially more permissive than in 2020, with the CLARITY Act legislation moving through Congress.
Centralization Concerns Follow the Good News
Telegram's role as the network's dominant validator has drawn commentary from analysts who argue it trades one risk for another. According to data tracked by DeFiLlama, total value locked on the network sits at a small fraction of the token's multi-billion-dollar market cap, and the network's DeFi sector remains modest compared to leading layer-1 blockchains. As CoinShares noted in a recent analysis, TON's DeFi ecosystem remains smaller in scale relative to Solana, BNB Chain, or major Ethereum layer-2s.
Critics in the blockchain community argue that a 950-million-user platform becoming its own blockchain's largest validator cuts against the core premise of decentralized networks. Telegram has responded by expanding the validator set to more than 400 nodes across six continents, framing this as evidence the network retains structural decentralization even as Telegram holds the primary validator seat.
For investors, the more immediate risk is on the supply side: the TON Believers Fund releases approximately 36.6 million tokens monthly through October 2028, providing persistent selling pressure, while over 68 percent of the circulating supply is held in large wallets. The Gram rename does not change those dynamics.
Three Undisclosed Steps Could Define the Network's Future
Durov has offered no specifics on steps five through seven of the MTONGA roadmap, and none appear in any public communication. Analysts tracking the roadmap have identified TON Pay 2.0 — an in-app payment layer designed for instant Telegram microtransactions — and TON Teleport, a bridge designed to bring Bitcoin liquidity into the TON ecosystem, as likely upcoming milestones. Neither has been officially confirmed as part of the MTONGA sequence.
What Durov has communicated is the directional intent: to make TON the payment and interaction layer for Telegram's billion-user platform, with near-zero fees and near-instant settlement. If the remaining three steps follow the pattern set by the first four — each delivering a measurable technical or governance improvement with a concrete market response — the six-year arc from SEC defeat to full operational control will be one of the more unusual comeback stories in cryptocurrency history.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Toncoin being renamed Gram?
Pavel Durov announced the rename as step 4 of his 7-part Make TON Great Again roadmap for The Open Network. Gram was the original name of the currency in Telegram's 2018 white paper, before the SEC forced Telegram to abandon the project in 2020 and the independent community that rebuilt the network renamed the token Toncoin. Durov described the move as returning to the project's roots and starting a new chapter.
What is the MTONGA roadmap?
MTONGA stands for Make TON Great Again — a seven-step plan Durov launched in April 2026 to transform The Open Network into the primary payment and application layer for Telegram's approximately 950 million monthly active users. Steps completed so far include the Catchain 2.0 upgrade for sub-second finality, a sixfold transaction fee reduction, Telegram becoming the network's largest validator, and now the Gram rename. Three steps remain undisclosed.
Does the Gram rename affect Toncoin holders?
For most holders, the rename is a display and ticker change. The underlying blockchain and its token economics — including staking, transaction fees, and smart-contract functions — remain unchanged. Exchanges and wallet providers are expected to update their listings during a transition period of approximately three weeks from the announcement.
What happened to the original Gram token?
The original Gram was the planned currency for Telegram's 2018 blockchain project. After Telegram raised $1.7 billion in a private token sale, the SEC filed an emergency injunction in October 2019, arguing the tokens were unregistered securities. A federal court sided with the regulator, and in June 2020 Telegram settled: returning $1.2 billion to investors and paying an $18.5 million civil penalty. The name Gram was effectively retired until Durov's announcement this week.
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