Learn about Gram (prev. Toncoin)
Gram (prev. Toncoin) News
Coins
Years after abandoning its crypto network plans in the face of regulatory scrutiny, Telegram has taken control of The Open Network—and now plans to embrace the original planned name for the Toncoin (TON) token.
On Monday, Telegram CEO and co-founder Pavel Durov wrote on his official channel that Toncoin will be rebranded as Gram, the original proposed name for Telegram's native token before the project was scrapped and taken over by community developers.
"Gram was the original name of TON’s cur...
Opinion
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GM!
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Markets
Toncoin jumped by 36% after the platform’s founder, Pavel Durov, announced Telegram’s “next step” would see it assume control of The Open Network, replacing the TON Foundation, slashing fees to near-zero, and installing itself as the blockchain's largest validator.
“The focus shifts to tech superiority. New ton.org, new dev tools, new performance upgrades. Timeline: 2-3 weeks,” Durov tweeted Tuesday.
Fees in TON have dropped 6× — to nearly zero.
Next step — Telegram replaces the TON Foundation...
Law and Order
AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser views the Telegram-focused tech firm’s latest contribution to the messaging platform’s ecosystem as deeply personal.
Since she blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica’s internal practices in 2018, which involved the misuse of personal data and its role in influencing elections through psychological profiling, she told Decrypt that swaths of people have reached out yearning to follow in her footsteps.
“I’ve had hundreds of people reach out to me from all over the wor...
Markets
The cryptocurrency market cap is steadily turning green, with altcoins accelerating their recovery bounce over the past day.
The native token of perps DEX Aster is up nearly 10% over the past 24 hours, making it the largest gainer in the top 50 altcoins by market capitalization. Other tokens including Hyperliquid and World Liberty Financial have followed suit, bouncing 8.9% and 7.6% respectively, according to data from price aggregator CoinGecko.
The broader altcoin sector has also seen gains,...
Markets
Kraken-backed xStocks have launched on the TON blockchain, making tokenized versions of U.S. stocks and ETFs readily available inside the Telegram app through its built-in TON Wallet.
The integration allows users to buy, hold, and transfer tokenized representations of equities such as Tesla, Nvidia, and the S&P 500 ETF without leaving the messaging app.
“Embedding tokenized U.S. stocks into Telegram Wallet is a massive UX unlock,” Dan Dadybayo, research and strategy lead at Unstoppable Wallet, t...
Business
Nasdaq has issued a warning to TON Strategy, one of a slew of new crypto treasury companies trading on the stock exchange, for violating its shareholder approval rules.
TON Strategy, a publicly traded marketing firm that recently changed its name and began purchasing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency Toncoin, failed to get shareholder approval for the massive crypto purchase, or for the private sale of stock shares that enabled the buy, Nasdaq warned the company late la...
Artificial Intelligence
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov took to the stage at Blockchain Life 2025 in Dubai on Wednesday to announce Cocoon, a decentralized AI compute network built on The Open Network (TON) blockchain that will pay GPU owners in Toncoin for powering private AI inference.
The network, formally called the Confidential Compute Open Network, will launch in November with Telegram as its first major customer. Applications for GPU providers and developers opened immediately following the announcement.
Cocoon create...
Business
Verb Technology will use $558 million in proceeds from a private placement to begin stockpiling and staking Toncoin, the Las-Vegas based marketer said in a press release on Monday.
The cryptocurrency, which serves as the native token of the Telegram-linked The Open Network, will be treated as the company’s “primary treasury reserve asset,” it said—representing the latest twist on a growing list of crypto treasury firms dedicated to various digital assets.
The company’s private placement in publi...
NFTs
Hip-hop legend Snoop Dogg’s latest NFT release sold out in half an hour, generating millions through Telegram and putting the platform’s blockchain-based features to the test.
The feat was praised by Telegram founder Pavel Durov on Wednesday, as he noted that blockchain minting and a secondary market are going live on the platform in three weeks.
“It’s going to be wild,” Durov tweeted.
🎤 @SnoopDogg’s digital collectibles drop on Telegram sold out in just 30 minutes today, generating $12M in sa...
Markets
Toncoin (TON) slumped Monday morning, falling 5% to $2.79 in the past 24 hours, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shot down claims that staking the cryptocurrency could be used to acquire the country's "Golden Visa."
On Sunday, TON Foundation CEO Max Crown tweeted that staking $100,000 worth of Toncoin for three years and paying a one-time processing fee of $35,000 could help users acquire the visa. Reports on the claims were reshared by billionaire Telegram founder Pavel Durov to his 2.6 mil...
DeFi
Holders of TON, the cryptocurrency that undergirds the Telegram-linked blockchain network, The Open Network, will soon be able to earn staking rewards via a new service—one promising “institutional-grade” security, along with ease of use and lower barriers to entry.
P2P.org, a non-custodial staking provider, today announced a collaboration with Ton Whales, a core TON development team, to offer a new staking solution targeted at exchanges and custodians.
The service, accessible as a widget via al...
Law and Order
Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of encrypted messaging platform Telegram, confirmed that France's foreign intelligence service asked him to ban conservative Romanian voices ahead of the May 2025 presidential election, citing terrorism and child safety concerns.
He refused.
"They met with me—allegedly to fight terrorism and child porn," Durov wrote on X on Monday.
Durov claims the latter subject "was never even mentioned," adding that the intelligence agency engaged in manipulative tactics, despite...
Law and Order
Telegram has terminated the most prolific crypto-fueled black market ever seen online, erasing a network that helped launder more than $27 billion across Asia’s cyber scam economy.
On Monday, the messaging platform banned thousands of accounts linked to Haowang Guarantee, formerly Huione Guarantee, forcing the illicit marketplace to shut down almost immediately.
“Telegrame were blocked all of our NFT, Channels and group… Haowang Grarantee will cease operation from now,” read a statement posted t...
Gaming
Telegram game Notcoin kick-started last year's tap-to-earn revolution that amassed hundreds of millions of players on the messaging app, but enthusiasm for the model has since dwindled following underwhelming token launches tied to increasingly overcomplicated schemes.
Now, a year after Notcoin’s NOT token launch sparked the frenzy, the game’s founders believe that reinventing classic video games via its recently announced Not Games platform will prompt the next Telegram gaming boom.
Sasha Plotv...
DeFi
Libre, a regulated real-world asset platform, and the TON Foundation have launched a $500 million tokenized fund on The Open Network, aiming to bring Telegram’s $2.4 billion in corporate debt onto the blockchain for the first time.
Dubbed the Telegram Bond Fund, the product allows institutional and accredited investors to gain exposure to Telegram’s outstanding bonds directly through the TON blockchain, according to a statement shared with Decrypt.
The fund will also participate in future Telegr...
Gaming
Trump’s Empire is a hot new Telegram game that builds on the number-goes-up premise of earlier tap-to-earn games, albeit with an unofficial Donald Trump vibe and a slick interface. And given Trump’s return to the White House and launch of a Solana meme coin, it’s particularly timely right now.
We’ve been playing loads of the game ahead of the eventual airdrop, and we’ve discovered a few tips and tricks that can hopefully help you maximize your earnings. Some tips are simply ways to get the most...
Gaming
Trump’s Empire is yet another Telegram game promising an airdrop for a relatively small time investment while using the name and likeness of a right-wing icon—with no direct involvement from the person himself. Sound familiar?
Of course, that sentence could also describe X Empire, the Elon Musk-themed Telegram game that blew up in popularity last year only to disappoint many players with its airdrop. Granted, the X token on The Open Network later surged in value, if only briefly, following Donal...
Gaming
Sweet, the startup behind sports digital collectibles platforms licensed by the NHL and MLS, announced Wednesday that it will integrate a new SCOR rewards token built on The Open Network, starting with a Telegram-based duo of sports mini-games.
Playable via the SCOR on Sweet channel on popular messaging app Telegram, the hockey and soccer games—called Ice Snake and Glove Hero, respectively—offer simple gameplay and retro-style graphics, letting players earn digital gems as they play.
Earned gems...
Gaming
Open Builders, the company behind influential Telegram tap-to-earn game Notcoin, announced Wednesday that it is expanding beyond individual games with the rollout of Not Games, a platform with unified progression and rewards shared across multiple new games.
Recently teased by Notcoin, the platform aims to unify what has previously been a fragmented gaming experience on Telegram by creating persistent player profiles, shared inventories, and an integrated economy across multiple games.
Not Games...