Durov Says Telegram Will Ship Native Gram Wallet to a Billion Users

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will embed a native, non-custodial Gram wallet in every version of Telegram this summer, putting a self-custody crypto wallet in front of the platform's more than one billion users.

In a post on July 21, Durov said he is "implementing a native non-custodial Gram wallet in every Telegram app," describing the plan as "the largest deployment of a non-custodial crypto wallet in history." He said the wallet will support instant, fee-free transfers of Gram, the token that until last month was known as Toncoin.

A non-custodial wallet means users hold their own private keys and control their assets directly, rather than relying on a third party to store funds. Telegram has not published a firm launch date, the full list of supported assets, or other technical specifications.

Gram Rallies

Gram climbed to an intraday high of $1.66 before paring the move to about $1.52, a 5.5% increase over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

On-chain, total value locked in TON-based DeFi protocols stood at about $66 million, and the network recorded roughly 117,600 active addresses and 3.85 million transactions over the prior 24 hours, according to DeFiLlama. Stablecoins on TON had a market capitalization of about $790 million, with Tether's USDT accounting for roughly 85% of that supply.

Durov has not disclosed how the wallet will affect the existing custodial Wallet product inside Telegram, or how the rollout will be handled in jurisdictions that restrict in-app crypto services.

Part of the "Make TON Great Again" Roadmap

The wallet is the latest step in a plan Durov began outlining in April to route The Open Network (TON) more tightly through Telegram. Under the seven-step roadmap he branded "Make TON Great Again," Telegram moved to replace the TON Foundation as the network's primary driver and became its largest validator, and network fees were cut roughly sixfold toward near-zero, laying the groundwork for the fee-free transfers Durov described.

The token itself was renamed from Toncoin to Gram in June following a community governance vote, reviving the name from Telegram's original 2018 blockchain whitepaper. The Defiant reported at the time that the token climbed as much as 19% on the rebrand, which Durov said was a branding change only, with no token swap and no action required from holders, validators or DeFi integrations.

A Name With History

Gram was the token Telegram sought to launch between 2018 and 2019, raising about $1.7 billion from investors before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved to halt the sale in 2020. Telegram abandoned the project and returned funds to investors, and a group of independent developers later revived the codebase under the Toncoin name and the TON Foundation.

Telegram has since integrated crypto features into the app in stages, including the custodial "Wallet" mini app and a self-custodial option built on TON. Durov said in March 2025 that Telegram had surpassed one billion monthly active users, the figure he now cites as the addressable base for the native Gram wallet.