In short (TL;DR). On June 1, 2026 Pavel Durov announced: the network's native coin is being renamed from Toncoin (TON) to Gram (GRAM). The network itself remains The Open Network (TON) — only the coin's name and ticker change. There is no swap: balances, addresses, contracts, staking, NFTs are left untouched, and the holder needs to do nothing. The community approved this in an on-chain vote (~79% "for"; the window closed on June 8). The ticker rollout across exchanges and wallets takes about 3 weeks. This is "step 4 of 7" in Durov's "Make TON Great Again" campaign.
What exactly happened#
- The coin:
Toncoin (TON)→Gram (GRAM). New name, new ticker, new logo. - The network: unchanged —
The Open Network, still abbreviated TON. When you see "built on TON," "TON wallet," "fee on the TON network," "TON Connect," "TON DNS" — that's about the network, and that name hasn't gone anywhere. - The mechanics: the rebrand is cosmetic. No swap, no migration, no new contract. Your coins will simply start showing up as GRAM where it used to say TON.
The easiest rule to keep in your head: TON is the country (the network). GRAM is its currency (the coin). The currency used to be called Toncoin; now it's Gram. By analogy — Russia stayed Russia, but the ruble got renamed. The map doesn't change; the lettering on the banknote does.
What did NOT change — and why it's important to know#
The holder needs to do nothing:
- balance, wallet address, seed phrase — the same;
- staked coins, DeFi positions, NFTs — all in place;
- no "exchange TON for GRAM" is required.
⚠️ Anti-scam. Any site, bot, or "support" offering to "migrate TON to GRAM," "exchange before the deadline," or "connect your wallet to convert" — is a scam. The official transition requires not a single action on your part. The only thing that changes on your side is the ticker label in the interface, and it will update by itself.
During the transitional ~3 weeks, different services update the ticker not simultaneously: ecosystem wallets and apps go first, exchanges and data aggregators later. So for a while you'll see both "TON" and "GRAM" in different places. That's normal, not a bug. Hardware wallets and block explorers may show the old "TON" the longest — until the vendor ships a metadata update.
Where the name "Gram" came from: a return to the roots#
This isn't a new name — it's the original one.
- 2018. In the first Telegram Open Network whitepaper, the native token was called Gram. Telegram raised ~$1.7 billion for it from 171 buyers (a sale via SAFT, ~2.9 billion Gram).
- 2019–2020. The U.S. SEC filed an emergency suit (October 2019), calling Gram an unregistered security. In March 2020 the court (Judge Castel) issued a preliminary injunction against the token distribution. In May 2020 Durov shut the project down. Under the settlement (June 26, 2020) Telegram returned ~$1.2 billion to investors and paid an $18.5 million fine.
- 2020–2021. The code was open source (GPL). Independent developers (Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelianenko, under the handle NewTON) picked up the canonical repository and renamed the token to Toncoin (2021). The community took the name TON Foundation at the same time, but the Swiss non-profit was formally registered in Zug only on September 6, 2023. Durov officially distanced himself; on December 23, 2021 he merely publicly "supported" the spin-off.
For six years the name "Toncoin" worked as a legal firewall — it separated Durov and Telegram from an asset the SEC had deemed a security. Bringing back the name "Gram" dismantles that firewall.
Why now: "Make TON Great Again," step 4 of 7#
The rename isn't a standalone event — it's the fourth step of Durov's seven-step MTONGA campaign (launched in April 2026). What's already been done:
- Catchain 2.0 (Apr 9): block time ~2.5s → ~400ms, finality ~10s → ~1s (≈10× faster).
- Fee cut of ~6× to ~$0.0005 per transfer (Durov promises a "zero" fee down the line).
- Telegram became the single largest validator (May 4), edging out TON Foundation as the main operational steward (the foundation wasn't dissolved — it kept its tokens, oversight, and veto right); ~2.2M GRAM staked. Telegram never disclosed its exact share; the "~25%" figure that circulated in the press is unreliable — that's ~0.37% of the ~590M staked, and the protocol's
max_factor=3caps any single validator at ~1.2–1.5M GRAM. Telegram's weight is in stewardship and control, not in its share of the stake. - The Toncoin → Gram rename (June 1).
Steps 5–7 have not been disclosed. Durov himself says this "sets the stage for what comes next."
A detail almost no one connected: who freed up the GRAM ticker#
Until recently the name "GRAM" on the TON network was taken — it was the first PoW jetton on TON, the community project gramcoin.org (with no connection to Telegram). And here's the timing coincidence:
- May 5, 2026 — this community token renamed itself to Grm and changed its ticker
GRAM → GRM(confirmed by its own channel and the gramcoin.org site). The motive is documented: a DSA complaint "from the owner of the GRAM trademark," which Durov personally relayed. The "Dutch company" specifics are attributed by the community — the nationality wasn't officially named, so we treat it as unconfirmed. - June 1, 2026 — 27 days later, Durov announces that TON's native coin becomes Gram (GRAM).
In other words, the "GRAM" namespace on TON freed up exactly a month before Durov occupied it — and almost in the same window as step 3 (the validator capture, May 4). Whether this was an independent trademark conflict or a conveniently cleared field is an open question, but the sequence is real and verifiable. This is exactly the "now you realize it was all connected" that people were posting in the channels.
The vote#
The change was run through an on-chain vote on ton.vote:
- For — 79.06%: 2,327,141 GRAM from 4,094 wallets.
- Against — 20.45%: 602,019 GRAM from 1,036 wallets.
- Abstained — 0.49%: 14,490 GRAM from 130 wallets.
- Voting-rights snapshot — May 31; voting window June 1→8, 16:00 UTC; token-weighted (weight = balance size).
The figures come from the primary source api.ton.vote; a total of 2,944,436 GRAM was cast from 5,260 wallets. The "~79.1% / 2.28M GRAM / 3,770 wallets" that circulated in the press on June 5 was an interim snapshot of a vote that hadn't yet closed.
An important caveat: in total ~2.94M GRAM voted — a tiny fraction of the multi-billion supply. Turnout as a percentage of supply wasn't disclosed, but it is very low. With a token-weighted model and strong concentration among large holders, critics fairly call this vote more of a symbolic ratification than a real choice by the community.
What this means for you#
- If you're new: do nothing. Just know that GRAM = the former Toncoin, and the network is still TON, just as it was.
- If you're a holder: your coins are safe and intact in full. Update your wallet app if you want, to see the current ticker.
- If you're looking for information: for a while, searching "Toncoin" and "GRAM" will lead to different places and surface old news (including the SEC story). That's transitional noise.
Between the lines: the non-obvious conclusions#
What follows is analysis, not facts: interpretation based on the whole picture, and we separate it from the confirmed material above deliberately. Each conclusion comes with a sober assessment — what's for it (why it carries weight), what's against it (why the weight is less than it seems), and what its real weight is. We call speculation speculation.
One running caveat. Where "largest validator" appears below, recall the correction from the MTONGA section above: Telegram's share of the stake was not disclosed. "~25%" is wording from communications, and the on-chain estimate (~0.37% of the staked total, a protocol cap of
max_factor=3) is a community guess. Telegram's real leverage is in stewardship and control, not in its share of the stake.
1. Not four upgrades, but a single acquisition in installments
Durov announced a 7-step plan and has done 4. Taken separately, these are technical improvements to the network. Together, each step moves governance from an independent foundation toward Telegram itself, and returning the name Gram to the coin is the flag planted on top. In short: "Telegram is now TON."
For. The consolidation is declared not by a critic but by Durov himself — "Telegram is taking back its crypto"; Telegram has been positioned as the "main driver" instead of TON Foundation (May 4), and internally it's a one-man empire (Pavel is the sole owner, and his brother Nikolai runs the crypto). The steps follow a roadmap announced in advance, rather than coinciding by chance.
Against. This is a consolidation of control and narrative — structurally it isn't shown: no change of charter, no on-chain seizure of governance, and 3 of the 4 steps are neutral with respect to control. The strong version ("a near-zero fee zeroes out independent validators, leaving Telegram as the only one with a reason to validate") is mechanically weak: TON validators feed mostly on emission, not on gas. And there's a null hypothesis with no malice: a founder came back to rescue an asset down ~75% — which reads as the salvage of a stalling project, not a Machiavellian takeover.
Weight — medium (by narrative; weaker by structure). The direction is correct and stated by Durov himself; but the load-bearing mechanical details (the fee, the validator share, the extrapolation of steps 5–7) are overestimated or speculative.
Deeper. The significance of the move isn't in the metric "is TON more centralized than BNB," but in the fact that re-tying the coin to Telegram/Durov erodes the firewall of independence that the token's tradability rested on after the 2020 SEC settlement (see conclusion 3).
2. Decentralization was a shield, not the essence — and Durov took the shield away
For years TON sold itself as a "no one's" blockchain — and that's precisely what legally covered it. Now Telegram and Durov are openly taking the network under control, and the price didn't fall — it rose. The paradox: the market praised exactly what the project disavowed for five years.
For. The inversion is documented. In 2021 the developers chose the name Toncoin specifically to distance themselves from Telegram/Gram (decentralization = the line of defense against "this is a security"). In 2026 that's being reversed. And the market already trades the coin as a proxy on Durov: on his arrest (Aug 2024) — a double-digit drop in a day and an exit from the top 10. The linkage is real and now explicit.
Against. The catchy framing "the market rewards centralization" confuses correlation with cause. +15–19% is a relief bounce off a −75% drawdown in a bull phase, in one package with real upgrades (a 6× fee cut, sub-second blocks) and the "return to the roots" hype. The closest counter-precedent: MATIC→POL — a clean rebrand that did NOT re-rate the token. And "the market" isn't a single thing: the same fact reads as rising risk, not a reward, to a sophisticated investor.
Weight — high for the core, medium for the framing. The verifiable core (the shield is off + the coin = a proxy on Durov + the linkage became operational) is solid. "The market rewards centralization as such" is already interpretation; it's more honest to say "the market didn't punish it in the moment."
Deeper. For Durov, decentralization was always a shield and marketing, not an operating model (Telegram — no board of directors, ~30 engineers). So this isn't an inversion of his behavior, but a mask slipping off.
3. Revenge on the SEC risks turning into an own goal
In 2020 the SEC killed the Gram token, latching on among other things to the fact that its value depended too much on the "issuer" — Telegram and Durov. The project survived by rebuilding into an "independent network" (Toncoin), and that independence became a legal shield. Now Durov does two things at once that pull in opposite legal directions: he brings back the forbidden name Gram (a gesture of confidence) — and at the same time makes Telegram the "driving force" of the network, reassembling that very issuer-centrality.
For. The substrate is real. The name Gram is literally the ticker from the case SEC v. Telegram, which they walked away from DELIBERATELY in 2021. Bringing it back re-imports the exact courtroom identity, rather than performing neutral cosmetics. And the coin↔Durov bond already has a measurable price (see conclusion 2).
Against. This is a risk argument, not an event that has occurred — neither the SEC nor a court has moved. More importantly: the rebrand is NOT a new offering (no swap, the same balances), so it creates no new trigger for the Howey test; post-Ripple practice holds that secondary trading of a token is not a securities transaction regardless of issuer-centrality; and the 3-year obligation to notify the SEC expired back in 2023. In the thaw climate of 2026, issuer-centrality weighs LESS, not more.
Weight — medium; the load-bearing support is symbolic, not legal. What's strong here is the revenge optics and the persona-logic. "The moves legally cancel each other out" is weaker and depends on the regulatory regime.
Deeper. The real issuer exposure is not the name or the validator, but Telegram's continued sales of >$450M of Toncoin in 2025 (the issuer profiting from sales) — the only truly "issuer-side" vector. It has nothing to do with the name Gram.
4. A "reset" button stamped by the SEC: the rebrand doesn't erase the baggage, it swaps it
TON carries a mountain of scandals behind it: the SEC suit and abandoned project of 2019–2020, Durov's arrest, the collapsed clickers (Notcoin, Hamster Kombat), network outages, the "Russian crypto" label. The rename to Gram is in part exactly a "reset" button: a new name, a new mood, a clean slate — and in the first hours the market rewarded it. The question is whether you can really zero out a reputation by swapping the signboard.
For (and here the logic is real). Part of the negativity is attached specifically to the WORD "Toncoin" — the search label "Toncoin scam," headlines like "Toncoin −75% / network halted on the DOGS drop," the narrative "the team dumped $450M." This is a lexical layer, and changing the ticker really does dilute it. Plus the psychological fatigue of holders with a ticker down −75% from its peak: a new name finds it easier to sell a "new chapter." And Durov's arc of "we were right all along" (Gram = the 2018 name, killed by the SEC, resurrected verbatim) gives the strongest emotional engine for a re-rating. A subtle detail in favor of the reset: the worst reputational tail — the tap-to-earn dumps — actually hung on SEPARATE brands (Notcoin −74…80%, Hamster −85…90%), not on Toncoin; the rename psychologically detaches the coin from that halo.
Against. As a mechanism this isn't a reset but a SWAP of baggage. "Gram" is exactly the name under which the SEC sued Telegram; we're trading the "Toncoin" labels for the most specific courtroom trace. You don't erase history by swapping the signboard: supply, fees, team, owner — the same. The heaviest weight (the arrest, the "Russian" label, the control) hangs on DUROV, not on the word — and the rebrand ties the coin to him MORE TIGHTLY, i.e. imports that negativity. Counter-precedents: Meta got stuck at the very bottom of reputation rankings, Diem shut down despite distancing itself; and XRP and BNB returned to all-time highs with NO rebrand at all — meaning a name change isn't even needed for negativity to burn off.
Weight — low as a "reset" mechanism, but the psychological motive is real. On the mass funnel (hundreds of millions in Telegram who don't know and won't google "Gram = SEC-2020"), the rebrand is a near-neutral wash; a slight minus only in the thin layer of cold research and compliance. The real weight is carried not by the name but by personalization — the tie to Durov — and that doesn't depend on the ticker.
Deeper. A symmetry of honesty: if the gain from erasing "Toncoin scam" is niche and temporary (see conclusion 8), then the bogeyman of "re-importing the SEC baggage" lives in the same minority search layer. Besides, the 2020 settlement forbade the SALE of Grams in the presale, not the word itself; on a liquid token that's been trading for 5 years, reusing the name is mostly optics, not a live legal risk.
5. "Make TON Great Again" is a bet, not a joke. The question: calculation, posturing, or just a pun?
Durov named the campaign "Make TON Great Again" — a direct calque of Trump's MAGA. This isn't a viral joke at random: the slogan is deliberately constructed. The argument is over what's behind it — cold regulatory calculation, a striking political pose, or just a lucky pun (the network is called TON — the template practically writes itself).
For. The deliberate construction is beyond dispute: it's step 4 of a roadmap announced in advance, and Durov has a documented signature of political provocation-symbols ("Digital Resistance," paper airplanes). The timing landed on the softening of U.S. crypto regulation in 2026, and bringing back the name Gram reads as symbolic revenge on the SEC: "we were right."
Against. "The brand as regulatory arbitrage" is an attribution of motive, not a fact; Durov declared no such goal. And the motive zeroes out geographically: Durov's real legal fire is France (12 charges) and Telegram's blocking in Russia, not the U.S.; aligning with the American wave doesn't help with that. Plus the self-undercut: the name Gram re-imports the very SEC case, and no explicit regulatory bonus actually materialized. The MAGA code also polarizes — it repels exactly as much as it attracts.
Weight — medium, but split. That the slogan is deliberate is reliable but almost trivial. That regulatory calculation specifically lies behind it is speculative and self-undercutting. The most interesting thing here isn't the answer but the argument itself.
Deeper. The third, most economical explanation: the network is literally called TON, so "Make TON Great Again" is a near-free pun that even an apolitical marketer would have produced. In which case the political coloring is a side resonance (Durov the showman, virality-first), not a signal to the regulator.
6. 27 days before the "return to the roots," someone was already freeing up the name Gram
Before the rename announcement, another small token named GRAM was made to give the name up (it became GRM, May 5), and Durov personally drove the complaint — 27 days before the big announcement and a day after the "Telegram is the largest validator" step. So the "spontaneous return to the roots" doesn't square on the timeline: the name was being cleared in advance.
For. The ticker change GRAM→GRM is community ground-truth; Durov's personal participation in relaying the complaint is documented; the rebrand technically requires no swap, so a free namespace is just about the only real preparatory step.
Against. The strong version — "they cleared it DELIBERATELY for the brand" — is unprovable. The source is essentially one (the community), there are no primary documents (the DSA complaint, the trademark registry), and the "Dutch company" attribution is a guess. And the provable minimum ("they planned ahead") already follows from the public 7-step roadmap. Worse for the conspiracy theory: the timing works AGAINST a covert pre-positioning — a quiet cleanup would be done well in advance, not a day after the loudest public step; the MTONGA publicity could itself have drawn an outside rightsholder.
Weight — speculative for the strong version, trivial for the weak one. A documented oddity — yes; "the field was cleared for the brand" is a suggestive but unprovable inference.
Deeper. There's also an internal inconsistency in the theory itself: a "meticulous orchestrator" clearing the field would have chosen NOT the most legally toxic name available. Yet he chose precisely Gram — the very one the SEC suit was about.
7. The ticker is taken? That's a trifle. The coin is now tried in Paris and choked in Moscow
The media argue that the name GRAM is already taken somewhere — but it costs the holder nothing and requires no migration. Far bigger is that the coin is now hard-wired to Telegram and personally to Durov. And Telegram in Russia is moving from throttling to an outright block, while Durov himself is on trial in France. Whoever's problems these are — the coin automatically inherits the same problems.
For. The geo-facts are fresh and verifiable: Telegram's throttling in Russia (since Feb 2026) and the course toward a block; the French case is active (arrest Aug 2024, 12 charges, a ban on leaving the country). The market already trades the coin as a proxy on Durov. And the rebrand + framing Telegram as the "driving force" erode the five-year firewall of "TON and Telegram are independent" right now.
Against. Almost all of this risk PRE-EXISTS the rebrand — the name neither creates nor changes it; the conclusion glues "the rename" to the whole MTONGA package. "A single point of failure under the Kremlin" is internally murky: Russia itself is choking Telegram, so this isn't a "Kremlin asset," but a coin squeezed from two different sides (sanctions/origin + blocks) — these are compounding vectors, not one. And precedents cool the long-term weight: the key-person/legal narrative burns off in a month or two (XRP, BNB).
Weight — medium. The base facts are solid, and the argument over the ticker really is secondary; but as a conclusion SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE REBRAND it's weaker — France and Moscow are orthogonal to the coin's name. The only geo-risk the rename actually creates is the name-bound reactivation of the SEC question (see conclusion 4).
Deeper. The headline is a deliberate figure of speech: it's Durov and Telegram that are tried and choked, not the coin; but that's precisely the point of key-person risk — the coin inherited someone else's risk profile in full.
8. Google will call the coin by its old name for six months — and almost no one will notice
When a name changes, search engines get lost for a long time: Google will keep returning "Toncoin" instead of "Gram" for months, and AI assistants all the more so. This is a real but healing scratch. And here's the honest reassessment: people are brought into TON by Telegram, not search. So the damage hits a secondary channel, not the main funnel.
For. The damage is technically real: a clean rename always costs organic traffic, and here the configuration is unfortunate — a permanent two-name split (network = TON, coin = Gram) and a name that's inherently "dirty" for search results, Gram (both a unit of mass and a name from the SEC case). What holds the conclusion above zero isn't the growth funnel but a thin layer: the cold newcomer who googles "what is this and is it safe" before buying, and the Google-independent layer of AI answers.
Against. As an acquisition channel, organic is secondary even where it should be strong: direct traffic dominates on crypto research sites, and TON's funnel is Telegram-native (hundreds of millions of MAU → millions of actives via games, mini-apps, the wallet, with no seed phrases). The damage is time-limited (3–6 months) and is fixed with standard hygiene (301 redirects, schema, updating CMC/CoinGecko/Wikipedia). The original framing "SEO damage is real and being ignored" inflated the weight of a secondary channel.
Weight — low (downgraded). Essentially correct: the funnel is Telegram-native, and SEO was never a channel of mass acquisition for TON.
Deeper. One nuance is worth keeping: the surviving layer (a newcomer's trust/due-diligence) is exactly the one the rebrand doesn't just mute but POISONS: the first result for the coin's name becomes the SEC court case. That's no longer findability but the reputation of the results — redirects don't fix it and three months don't bound it. If you're going to press on "findability will suffer," that's where to strike, not the classic Google organic.
FAQ#
Are GRAM and Toncoin the same thing? Yes. GRAM is the new name of the coin that used to be called Toncoin. The same asset, the same network, the same balance.
Do I need to change or exchange anything? No. There is no swap and no migration. Balances, addresses, staking — unchanged.
Was the network renamed too? No. The network stays The Open Network (TON). Only the coin was renamed.
Why was the name "Gram" brought back? It's the original name from the 2018 whitepaper, which had to be abandoned after the SEC suit. Durov is bringing it back as a "return to the roots" — step 4 of 7 in the Make TON Great Again campaign.
What should I do if I'm offered to "migrate TON to GRAM"? Don't do it. It's a scam. The official transition requires no action from the holder.
Prepared by TONboard. The "Between the lines" section is editorial analysis based on open sources, separated from the confirmed facts.