How Did Telegram Turn Its Messaging App Into a Crypto Gateway?

Telegram built a crypto infrastructure layer directly inside its messaging app by making The Open Network (TON) blockchain the exclusive engine for payments, mini apps, and digital asset transactions across its more than 1 billion monthly active users. 

Telegram reached 1 billion monthly active users in March 2025, marking a 2,757% increase from 35 million users at launch in 2014. The result is the largest consumer-facing crypto distribution channel ever assembled inside a single app, where users can send money, buy digital goods, and interact with decentralized applications without downloading anything extra.

From a Banned Token to a Billion-User Blockchain

The story starts with a legal setback. The Open Network began life as the "Telegram Open Network," a Layer-1 blockchain unveiled by Telegram's founders in 2018 to extend the app beyond messaging. After the SEC challenged Telegram's 2018 private token sale, a US court blocked distribution of the original "Grams" token in 2020, and Telegram formally withdrew.

That separation proved temporary. Independent developers revived the codebase as "The Open Network," and a community-run TON Foundation brought the mainnet online while Telegram continued separately as a company.

The reunion happened in stages. In January 2025, the TON Foundation announced that TON became the exclusive blockchain infrastructure powering Telegram's Mini App ecosystem. Toncoin became the only cryptocurrency accepted for non-fiat payments for Telegram services, including Telegram Stars, Telegram Premium, Telegram Ads, and Telegram Gateway. Toncoin also became the only currency used to pay Mini App developers and channel owners for earned Stars and advertisement revenue.

Then Telegram went further. In April 2026, Telegram took over the TON Foundation's primary responsibilities and became the network's largest validator under its "Make TON Great Again" (MTONGA) program. Telegram staked 2.2 million TON to operate as a primary validator on April 30, 2026, formally reuniting the blockchain with the company that originally conceived it.

How Does the Crypto Integration Actually Work Inside Telegram?

The integration rests on three technical layers working together inside the app.

The first is TON Connect, the protocol that links Telegram Mini Apps to blockchain wallets. TON Connect enables secure communication between wallets and decentralized applications, allowing users to authorize transactions while keeping control of their private keys. It is now the mandatory connection protocol for all Telegram Mini Apps using TON ecosystem services.

The second is Telegram Stars, the in-app currency for digital goods, paid media, gifts, and creator content inside Telegram. It is important to understand what Stars are and what they are not. Stars are an in-app currency. They live inside Telegram's account system, not on a public blockchain. Users buy Stars with regular payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, or card, and spend them on Mini Apps, channel content, and gifts. Stars are not crypto. They function more like airline loyalty points than like Gram tokens. The connection to the TON blockchain only kicks in on the creator side: creators who receive Stars can convert them to Toncoin via Fragment, Telegram's official Web3 marketplace, which is where the in-app economy connects to the on-chain world. Regular users who buy Stars cannot convert them back to crypto. Creators must also hold at least 1,000 Stars for a minimum of 21 days before a withdrawal is eligible.

The third is the Telegram Wallet, a custodial wallet embedded directly in the app. Telegram launched the TON Wallet in the US on July 22, 2025, giving its 87 million American users the ability to send, receive, and manage cryptocurrency directly inside the app, with no downloads, extensions, or separate logins required. More than 100 million users globally had already activated the wallet in 2024, but the US launch had been delayed amid regulatory uncertainty.

What Are Telegram Mini Apps?

Mini Apps are small applications that run inside Telegram without requiring users to install anything separately. Mini Apps open inside Telegram itself, without forcing users to install a separate mobile app or switch to an external site. That structure helps reduce friction for new users and makes simple onchain actions easier to understand. Games, DeFi tools, and trading interfaces all run inside this format. 

Based on monthly active user data, the top-performing categories of Mini Apps are crypto at 87 million users, gaming at 79 million, NFTs at 13 million, entertainment at 9 million, and AI at 9 million.

In April 2026, Wallet in Telegram launched perpetual futures trading for more than 150 million users through an integration with Lighter, a decentralized exchange running on a custom ZK-rollup on Ethereum with on-chain order matching and liquidations. Users can open long or short positions on more than 50 assets including BTC, Toncoin, tokenized equities, ETFs, oil, and gold, with leverage of up to 50x available through an integrated custodial wallet.

What Is the TON Blockchain's Technical Setup?

TON is a Layer-1 blockchain built for high throughput using dynamic sharding. TON Blockchain is built with workchains that can split into shardchains as traffic increases. When demand falls, those shardchains can merge again. This flexible design helps the network spread activity across multiple lanes instead of pushing everything through one narrow path.

Transactions settle in approximately 0.6 seconds, with an average fee of $0.0005. That performance profile matters because Telegram can direct very large user flows toward a single mini app in a short period, which would overwhelm a slower network.

TON's deeper integration with Telegram collapses the traditional crypto UX stack, meaning wallet, browser, and dApp, into a single messaging-native environment where onchain actions can feel like normal in-app behavior.

Tokenomics: How Gram (Previously Toncoin) Works

The initial TON supply of 5 billion tokens was placed into 20 Proof-of-Work Giver smart contracts and mined permissionlessly between July 2020 and June 2022. Since the Proof-of-Stake transition on June 28, 2022, new TON is minted via validator block rewards at approximately 0.5 to 0.7 percent annually. The current total supply is approximately 5.16 billion TON.

As of May 2026, roughly half the total supply is in circulation: approximately 2.66 billion out of a total of 5.13 billion. In 2023, validators voted to freeze roughly 1.08 billion TON in inactive miner wallets for 48 months to improve supply clarity, representing about 20% of supply at the time.

The Gram Rebrand

The token's name just changed. Toncoin officially rebranded to Gram, with the ticker switching from TON to GRAM at 8:00 p.m. UTC on June 15, 2026. The decision came after a community governance vote that received 81.22% support, with voting running from June 1 to June 8, 2026. The blockchain itself stays The Open Network (TON). Only the token's display name, ticker, and logo changed. No swap, claim, bridge, or migration is required from holders.

The change is a rebrand, not a token swap. TON remains the name of the blockchain, and the transition does not require any action from holders, validators, or DeFi integrations. As of late June 2026, Gram trades at approximately $1.70.

Cocoon: Telegram's Decentralized AI Layer on TON

Beyond payments, Telegram launched a decentralized compute network on top of TON. Cocoon, or Confidential Compute Open Network, is a decentralized AI compute network built on TON, announced by Pavel Durov at Blockchain Life 2025 and launched on mainnet in December 2025. 

GPU owners contribute computing power and earn Toncoin, while user data remains encrypted throughout execution via Trusted Execution Environments, known as TEEs. Telegram already routes lightweight AI operations through Cocoon, including message translation and summarization, with heavier workloads such as media processing and conversational assistants planned next.

BotFather, Telegram's built-in tool for creating and configuring bots, reached 7.3 million monthly active users by early 2026, more than doubling from 3.5 million in January 2025. Combined with native Toncoin withdrawal support for bot earnings, these updates tighten the economic link between Telegram's bot ecosystem and the TON network.

What Are the Risks of TON's Telegram Dependency?

The integration cuts both ways. TON's main risk is its growing dependency on Telegram. If users can buy, hold, send, and use Toncoin without leaving a familiar environment, TON becomes more than a speculative asset. But the same relationship means that any disruption to Telegram directly affects TON.

This was demonstrated sharply in June 2026. India banned Telegram for one week on June 16, 2026, following exam fraud concerns, which triggered a sharp sell-off in TON's price. In the same week, Coinbase announced it would discontinue support for Toncoin perpetual futures contracts, with trading halting on June 17, 2026.

Telegram operates in a specific legal context that includes Durov's ongoing French criminal investigation for complicity in platform-related crimes. A blockchain governed by a corporate entity whose CEO faces ongoing investigations carries direct exposure to those investigations.

Stablecoins add real liquidity but also highlight how far ecosystem TVL has fallen from peak levels. As of May 2026, USDT accounts for approximately $580 million out of $770 million of stablecoins circulating on the TON network, with Ethena's USDe second. TON's chain TVL sits at approximately $69 million to $82 million as of early May 2026, far below the 2024 high of nearly $800 million.

Conclusion

Telegram built its crypto infrastructure by making TON the exclusive settlement layer for payments, mini apps, creator payouts, and digital goods across a platform that crossed 1 billion monthly active users in March 2025. 

TON Connect standardizes wallet connections for Mini Apps; the Telegram Wallet gives users direct custody of Gram tokens; Telegram Stars provides a fiat-to-crypto pipeline where users pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay and creators convert earned Stars into Gram via Fragment. Cocoon extends the network into decentralized AI compute, with GPU operators earning Gram for processing encrypted workloads inside Telegram. 

The token, now trading as Gram after a June 2026 community vote backed by 81.22% of voters, runs on a dynamically sharded blockchain with sub-second finality and fees of approximately $0.0005 per transaction. The ecosystem's TVL has contracted sharply from 2024 highs, and its dependence on Telegram's legal and regulatory situation remains a concrete operational risk. What Telegram has built is a functioning consumer crypto layer inside a mainstream app, with real users, real transactions, and real structural risks to match.

Resources

1. TON Foundation Blog – TON Becomes Exclusive Blockchain for Telegram's Mini App Ecosystem (January 2025)
2. CoinShares – What Is TON: A Complete Guide Including Tokenomics, Staking, and Telegram Integration (May 2026)
3. Messari – Understanding TON: A Comprehensive Overview (April 2026)
4. Guardarian Blog – What TON Deeper Integration With Telegram Means for Crypto (May 2026)
5. Crypto.news – Telegram Takes Back TON: Inside the 2026 Takeover
6. The Defiant – Telegram's Durov Renames TON's Native Token to Gram (June 2026)
7. Phemex News – Toncoin Rebrands to Gram on June 15 After Community Vote
8. MEXC News – TON Coin Rebrands to GRAM After 81% Community Vote Approval
9. CoinMarketCap AI – Latest Gram (prev. Toncoin) News: Future Outlook, Trends and Market Insights
10. SpotedCrypto – Toncoin to GRAM Rebrand June 2026: Ticker Change Explained
11. CNBC – Telegram's Crypto Wallet Goes Live to Its 87 Million US Users (July 2025)
12. DEXTools News – Telegram Stars and TON: How They Connect, Complete Guide 2026
13. DemandSage – Telegram Users Statistics 2026: Latest Global Data
14. Fortune – Telegram-Based Blockchain TON Raises $400 Million From Prominent Crypto VCs