$GRAM to $TON, and now back to $GRAM
This isn't just a rebrand. It's the market being reminded of the one thing that actually matters here: the massive user base @telegram already sits on
Quick history first
The story is messier than most people remember. In October 2019, the SEC sued Telegram, claiming the $GRAM token sale was an unregistered securities offering. After a long legal fight, Telegram's blockchain project was forced to shut down in 2020. They settled with the SEC, paid an $18.5M fine, returned roughly $1.2B to investors, and walked away from the project entirely
In 2021, a community led by Anatoliy Makosov and Kirill Emelyanenko kept it alive through an initiative called Newton. By May 2021, they formed the $TON Foundation, launched $TON Mainnet, and renamed it from Telegram Open Network to The Open Network
Now fast forward to 2026
In my view, bringing the $GRAM brand back isn't nostalgia for the early days. It's a reminder of something most people forgot:
$TON's biggest investment thesis was never the blockchain. It was always Telegram
Look at the numbers
Telegram today:
- 1B+ monthly active users
- 500M+ daily active users
TON, based on latest data:
- 53.75M wallets activated
- 1.79M monthly active wallets
- 148K daily active wallets
Put those side by side and the gap is staggering. TON's monthly active wallets are about 0.18% of Telegram's MAU. Every wallet ever created adds up to roughly 5.4% of Telegram's user base
Which leads to a very simple question
What happens if $GRAM converts even 1%, 5%, or 10% of Telegram's billion users into on-chain users? What happens if $GRAM opens the door wider for outside developers to build on Telegram Mini Apps for an audience measured in billions?
If even one of those scenarios plays out, what the market is pricing today might only reflect a tiny slice of the actual opportunity ahead
So the real question is this: is the market pricing $GRAM on what it is right now, or is it underpricing what a billion-user Telegram pipeline could become?
