Toncoin, the native cryptocurrency of The Open Network (TON) blockchain, will be renamed Gram. The project team announced a return to the asset’s original name, which was used in the project’s White Paper.
Pavel Durov, co-founder of Telegram and the TON Blockchain, announced the rebranding of Toncoin (TON), which will affect only the cryptocurrency’s name. The asset will be renamed Gram.
According to Durov, Gram was the original name of TON’s native token during the early stages of the project’s development and was specified in its original technical documentation. Returning to the original name marks a new phase in the ecosystem’s long-term development strategy.
The blockchain project was originally introduced by Telegram in 2018 under the name Telegram Open Network (TON). Through two private funding rounds, the project raised near $1.7 billion. However, Telegram withdrew from further development of TON in 2020 following legal proceedings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Development of the blockchain network was subsequently continued by an independent community, which renamed the project The Open Network in 2021 while retaining the TON acronym. At the same time, the Gram cryptocurrency was renamed Toncoin.
The rebranding process is expected to take about three weeks. During that period, ecosystem participants will gradually transition to the new asset name. All components of the blockchain network’s infrastructure will continue operating under the TON brand.
Durov also noted that the renaming is intended to lay the groundwork for future ecosystem initiatives and upgrades. The rebranding has been designated as the fourth of seven steps in the Make TON Great Again (MTONGA) development program, which Durov launched in April. The program’s first phase introduced the Catchain 2.0 consensus mechanism, increasing transaction processing speeds sixfold. Details regarding the remaining MTONGA milestones have not yet been disclosed.
Since 2025, all Web3 solutions within the Telegram ecosystem have exclusively used the TON blockchain, and Toncoin has served as the platform’s sole cryptocurrency for payments. The ecosystem later introduced TON Pay, a dedicated software development kit (SDK) designed to integrate cryptocurrency payments into Telegram Mini Apps.
