Pavel Durov has moved Telegram back to the center of The Open Network, and now he wants Toncoin to carry the old Gram name again. That is more than a cosmetic change, because Gram is the identity regulators forced Telegram to abandon six years ago.
The name Gram never really went away. It just sat beneath the surface while Telegram, regulators, developers, and traders rebuilt the story around it. Durov proposed the Toncoin-to-Gram rebrand on June 2 as part of his broader MTONGA roadmap, after announcing on May 4 that Telegram would replace the TON Foundation as the main driving force behind The Open Network and become its largest validator. The token name would change from Toncoin to Gram. The blockchain would remain TON. User balances, wallets, addresses, staking positions, NFTs, and DeFi apps would not need to migrate. Simple on paper, historically charged in practice.
This is not a standalone branding decision. The more important shift came first: Telegram is formally moving from distribution partner to operational center of gravity for TON. As Cointelegraph reported after Durov's May announcement, Telegram is expected to become the network's largest validator, while the details of the TON Foundation's future role remain less clear. That matters because TON spent years being careful about distance. The community-led network existed partly because Telegram could not safely be seen as the direct promoter and controlling force behind the token the SEC had already targeted.
The original Gram had a spectacular collapse. Between 2018 and 2019, Telegram raised approximately $1.7 billion from accredited investors for its blockchain project. The SEC filed an emergency action in October 2019, arguing the Gram token sale amounted to an unregistered securities offering. A federal court blocked the distribution of the tokens in March 2020. By June 2020, Telegram had agreed to pay an $18.5 million penalty and return roughly $1.2 billion to investors. The project was effectively dissolved.
Community developers then picked up the pieces and built what became The Open Network, keeping Telegram at arm's length to avoid repeating the same regulatory problem. That distance was strategic. It gave TON room to keep building without looking like a continuation of Telegram's aborted token sale. It also let Telegram integrate pieces of the network gradually through wallets, mini apps, creator payments, and commerce without publicly owning the whole thing.
Now Telegram is stepping into the validator seat. Durov is fronting the roadmap. The name Gram is back on the table. The SEC's core argument in 2019 was that investors were buying into Telegram's promotional efforts and organizational capacity, not a sufficiently decentralized network. The 2026 version has Telegram back in the driver's seat, although under materially different market and regulatory conditions. The current US posture toward crypto has shifted away from the enforcement-heavy approach of the previous administration and toward legislation, exchange-traded products, and clearer market structure rules. Durov is betting that the same name can land differently this time.
The infrastructure underneath the rebrand
The Gram proposal lands on top of a network that has been building real technical momentum. TON's Catchain 2.0 upgrade was announced in April 2026 with the goal of cutting block finalization from roughly 2.5 seconds to the 200 to 400 millisecond range, with finality near one second. Fees were also cut sharply, with standard transfers moving toward roughly $0.0005 per transaction. Durov has framed those changes as the early steps in a wider roadmap that also includes developer tools, a refreshed ton.org, TON Pay 2.0, and Bitcoin liquidity through TON Teleport.
What this means practically is straightforward. Telegram has close to a billion users and a blockchain payment layer sitting inside the app, not in a separate consumer product that has to fight for attention. Games, creator payouts, commerce, peer-to-peer transfers, and mini app payments can all run through the same environment where users already message, join channels, and follow communities. That is the distribution argument. No other layer-one chain has anything quite like it.
Markets reacted, but the real contest is distribution
Toncoin rose sharply after the May validator announcement, with several market trackers showing gains of roughly one-third in the following 24 hours and a four-month price high near $1.80. The June Gram proposal brought another move, with reports showing TON up about 15% as traders reacted to the revived name and the expected three-week rollout. The market read the combination of Telegram control, lower fees, and the Gram identity as a consolidation signal rather than a reason to step away.
For competing layer-one networks, the more relevant number is not the daily price move. It is Telegram's user base. Solana, Ethereum, Sui, and other major chains compete on developer ecosystems, liquidity, throughput, and applications. Gram would compete on access. If Telegram turns its messaging platform into the front door for payments and onchain activity, the next wave of users may not arrive through exchanges, DeFi dashboards, or wallet extensions. They may arrive because the payment button is already inside the app they use every day.
The regulatory question is real and should not be dismissed. Telegram taking a central validator role and Durov publicly pushing the Gram name does revive the kind of visible corporate promotion the SEC challenged in 2019. A friendlier environment does not make the risk disappear. A future administration, a new SEC chair, or a shift in congressional appetite could reopen questions about whether Gram is being driven primarily by the efforts of one identifiable company.
That is the tension Durov has chosen. Telegram can give TON what most crypto networks lack: consumer distribution, product speed, and a reason for normal users to touch crypto without first becoming crypto users. It also gives regulators a clearer target if the political weather changes. The name Gram carries ambition, but it also carries memory. The next few months will show whether Telegram can turn that memory into a mainstream payments story, or whether the old warning label still matters more than the new roadmap.
Also read: Solana marks unprecedented eighth straight month of decline as price hits eighty-two dollars • Solana Wormhole bridge expands cross chain liquidity as Ethereum fees squeeze DeFi users • Newer generation layer one protocols remove the high financial barriers to decentralized finance and tokens
