What is Gram (prev. Toncoin)? It is the native token of The Open Network (TON), a proof-of-stake Layer-1 blockchain originally developed by the team behind the Telegram messaging app. The token was renamed from Toncoin (TON) to Gram (GRAM) in June 2026, and the blockchain kept its original name.
Core technology and blockchain architecture
TON uses a sharded design often described as a blockchain of blockchains. A masterchain maintains network configuration and the final state of all workchains and shardchains. Workchains execute transactions, and each workchain can split into shardchains for parallel processing. Shards are created, split and merged according to transaction load, and each shard runs its own validator set.
Smart contracts run on the custom TON Virtual Machine (TVM). In April 2026, the network replaced its original Catchain 1.0 consensus with Catchain 2.0, a modified version of the Simplex protocol that went live on 9 April 2026. Block production fell from about 2.5 seconds to about 400 milliseconds, and finality fell from about 10 seconds to about 1 second. TON states it has reached 100K+ TPS in a public test, a figure the project presents as its own and that independent sources did not confirm.
Primary use cases and real-world applications
GRAM is used to pay transaction fees, transfer value, and stake for network security. Base transaction costs were cut about sixfold to around 0.00039 GRAM on 1 May 2026.
The main consumer channel is Telegram. In January 2025, the TON Foundation announced that TON became the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for Telegram's Mini App ecosystem, which it said serves over 950 million monthly active users. The TON Connect protocol links Mini Apps to wallets. Telegram's non-custodial Gram Wallet, natively integrated into the messenger, began rolling out on 31 August 2026, according to ChangeNow.
Who is behind Gram (prev. Toncoin) and where is it based?
The project began in 2018 as the Telegram Open Network. Pavel Durov and Nikolai Durov are the figures associated with its creation, and Nikolai is named as the author of the original TON whitepaper. Telegram and its subsidiary TON Issuer raised capital through a token sale that the sources describe as $1.7 billion. The SEC halted the offering on 11 October 2019. Telegram and TON Issuer later agreed to return more than $1.2 billion to investors and pay an $18.5 million civil penalty, under SEC settlements announced on 26 June 2020.
Telegram ended its involvement in May 2020, and TON code development passed to the open-source community on 24 May 2020. The TON Foundation was established in Switzerland as a non-profit organization in 2023. In May 2026, Pavel Durov announced that Telegram would replace the Foundation as the primary steward of the network and become its largest validator. The reporting does not describe how the Foundation's role was legally transferred, and the sources do not confirm the foundation's current legal status after that change. The sources do not name the current core developers, and no single operating company for the network is confirmed.
Tokenomics
As of the market snapshot, GRAM has a circulating supply of 2,838,922,807 and a total supply of 5,275,989,279. The original whitepaper set a 5 billion coin cap, but total supply now exceeds that figure, which is consistent with continued minting. New GRAM is issued to pay validators, with a base subsidy of 1.7 GRAM per masterchain block and 1 GRAM per basechain block. Reported annual inflation differs by source, from 0.584% at TonStat to 4% at Tonscan.
Since 17 June 2023, half of transaction fees are burned in real time, with the burn set to continue indefinitely. Burns offset part of issuance but do not match it one-for-one. Token holders voted in early 2023 to freeze about 1.08 billion GRAM, roughly 21% of total supply. Starting in October 2025, about 37 million GRAM has entered circulation every 30 days across 36 monthly installments, ending in late 2028.
Consensus and network security
TON is a proof-of-stake network in which changes require approval by a majority of validators. The protocol assumes that fewer than one-third of validator weight is Byzantine, and it uses a two-thirds stake quorum. The technical minimum stake for validation is 300,000 GRAM. CoinShares reports about 421 active validators as of June 2026, and the ton.org wallets page lists 383 validators. CoinShares also reports about 1.2 billion GRAM staked, or around 9% of total supply.
Market position
GRAM is ranked #39 by market capitalization at $3.42B, with a 24h trading volume of $46.27M. The token is priced at $1.20, up 2.83% over 24 hours and down 23.47% over 30 days. It trades 85.40% below its all-time high of $8.25.
Development activity and roadmap
Telegram's Make TON Great Again (MTONGA) plan has seven announced steps. The first four are complete: the Catchain 2.0 upgrade, the fee reduction, Telegram's role as steward and largest validator, and the rename to Gram. The sources do not disclose steps five to seven. Other items listed as in progress or planned include Rust Node v1, Builders Portal 3.0, TON Pay 2.0, and a Teleport BTC bridge. The sources do not confirm their status after April 2026.