Gram (prev. Toncoin) (TON) Price

TON — the coin now marketed as Gram, previously known as Toncoin — is the native asset of The Open Network, a sharded blockchain closely integrated with Telegram's messaging app. Both names describe the exact same coin: there was no token migration, and holders kept the same balance straight through the rename.

The story behind Gram (prev. Toncoin)

Telegram itself designed the network back in 2018, hoping to build a blockchain that hundreds of millions of messaging users could tap into without ever leaving the app. The plan collapsed in 2020 after an SEC enforcement action forced Telegram to abandon it, and an independent community picked up the code and relaunched it as The Open Network rather than letting the project die.

Telegram later came back around and embraced TON as its blockchain partner, and mini-app games such as Notcoin and Hamster Kombat pulled tens of millions of new users on-chain during 2024, giving the network a distribution advantage almost no other Layer-1 can claim.

What TON is used for

You would use TON, or Gram as it now appears in Telegram's own interface, to pay transaction fees and to stake with validators who secure the network. Inside Telegram itself it covers wallet transfers, mini-app payments, username auctions, and the TON DNS and storage services that let apps run partly inside the messenger rather than requiring you to open a browser at all.

Gram (prev. Toncoin) in the market today

TON's access to Telegram's enormous existing user base is unmatched among Layer-1 blockchains, which is precisely why it grew so fast. The honest caveat is that activity remains heavily concentrated in games and airdrop campaigns rather than the kind of sustained DeFi usage that anchors other large chains, leaving how many of those users stick around once the incentives fade as a genuinely open question.