On June 1, 2026, Pavel Durov introduced that Toncoin’s identify could be modified to Gram. It is a change that solely applies to crypto belongings, and The Open Community will hold its identify. The information despatched asset costs up 13% within the first few hours. Nevertheless, essentially the most related knowledge is rebrand: Durov described this because the fourth section of a seven-phase plan he named “Make TON Nice Once more”, recognized by the acronym MTONGA.
MTONGA is neither a technical doc nor a roadmap printed in a repository. It is a seven-step plan Durov launched in April 2026 to create an open community. Telegram’s main fee and utility tier for about 950 million month-to-month energetic customers. Mr. Durov didn’t publish the seven steps . He communicated them in sequence by private channels with out setting a date prematurely, making a cycle through which every announcement introduced renewed consideration to the undertaking.
Though the identify alludes to the political slogan “Make America Nice Once more,” the aim is cryptocurrency infrastructure. MTONGA additionally emerged round it as a meme-type token inside the TON ecosystem, unbiased of Telegram and Durov speculating the story of the plan. They’re two various things: Durov’s strategic plan and the token that borrows his identify.
4 steps already taken
Step one was the activation of Catchain 2.0, introduced on April ninth. This diminished the block time from roughly 2.5 seconds to 400 milliseconds. Transactions take roughly 10 seconds to lower than 1 second to finish.
The second step passed off 2 weeks later. Community charges have dropped to 0.00039 tons per transaction, a 6x discount to lower than $0.00005 at a hard and fast charge that doesn’t change based mostly on congestion. Durov famous that the long-term route is to goal for zero commissions on most trades, however didn’t specify a date for that objective.
The third step, which passed off on Could 4, was a very powerful by way of governance. Telegram changed the TON Basis as the first administrator of the community and took over as the biggest validator with a bigger safety curiosity than another single entity.
The fourth step is to rebrand or rebrand grams. Gram was the identify of the token throughout the first Telegram push in 2018when the corporate raised $1.7 billion in a non-public ICO earlier than the SEC intervened in 2020. This alteration doesn’t suggest an trade of tokens or a change within the financial standing of the asset. Anybody who at the moment holds Toncoin may have Grams when the transition is full (estimated inside 3 weeks).
3 lacking steps
Durov didn’t present particulars about steps 5, 6, and seven, and no data has been made public to this point. Analysts to trace street map They cite TON Pay 2.0, a funds layer for immediate microtransactions inside Telegram, and TON Teleport Bridge, a mechanism that brings Bitcoin liquidity to the TON ecosystem, as potential candidates. None have been formally confirmed.
A structural threat of this plan is its dependence on Telegram as an entity. If Durov’s authorized scenario in Europe deteriorates or the corporate’s priorities change;Your participation as a validator could also be diminished or redirected. Along with this, TON’s decentralized trade quantity decreased from a peak of $1.4 billion in 2024 to $26 million in April 2026, and the full quantity locked in DeFi decreased from $766 million to $55 million in the identical interval.
In its first 4 steps, MTONGA describes the technical and governance retransformation of a community that has been beneath neighborhood management for six years, returning it to the orbit of its unique creators. The remaining three steps, but to be revealed, will decide whether or not this retransformation results in good use or stays a market story.
