Pavel Durov has announced that TON's native currency is dropping the Toncoin name and rebranding to Gram (GRAM), bringing back the original name from Telegram's 2018 whitepaper. The move is part of step 4 of 7 in Durov's 'Make TON Great Again' (MTONGA) roadmap, with a transition period of about three weeks. No token swap or technical changes affect balances, staking, or DeFi — only the name changes.
From Toncoin to Gram
The name 'Gram' was first used in Telegram's original TON whitepaper, which raised $1.7 billion before the SEC stepped in during 2020. That SEC action led Telegram to abandon the project, refund investors, and open-source the code. The community later relaunched it as Toncoin under the TON Foundation. Now Durov is circling back to the original branding, part of a broader push to tighten Telegram's integration with blockchain.
What's actually changing
Users won't see a token swap, a snapshot, or any disruption to staking or DeFi positions. All balances simply shift over to the Gram ticker. The rebrand is expected to take about three weeks to fully roll out across exchanges, wallets, and dApps. Durov's earlier roadmap steps already delivered Catchain 2.0 for sub-second finality, fee reductions by 6x, and Telegram becoming TON's largest validator.
Price surge and market context
TON's price has already rallied hard since Durov's takeover announcements in May, climbing from roughly $1.30 to peaks near $2.80 — a gain of 23% to over 100% depending on when you measure. The rebrand is being pitched as more than a cosmetic change: the hope is that a simpler name like Gram will boost utility in Telegram's Mini Apps, payments, and creator tools. With about 1 billion users, Telegram has a built-in distribution channel that few chains can match.
The remaining three roadmap steps are expected to bring developer tools, a revamped ton.org, TON Pay upgrades, and Bitcoin liquidity bridges. No dates have been set for those, but the transition to Gram should wrap up by late June. The big question is whether the name change alone can help TON break out of its current reputation as 'the Telegram chain' and into broader DeFi and payments use.
