Gram (prev. Toncoin)
KLEAR3 ResearchPublished Updated
Gram (prev. Toncoin) is the native currency of The Open Network, known as TON, a layer-1 blockchain settled by a Byzantine-fault-tolerant protocol called Catchain. The currency has gone full circle: launched as Gram in 2018, left by Telegram after a 2020 dispute with the SEC and continued as Toncoin, renamed back to Gram on 1 June 2026.
What does The Open Network actually do?
TON runs its own layer-1 blockchain rather than riding on someone else’s. Validators reach agreement through Catchain, a Byzantine-fault-tolerant protocol built for sharded block production. Every transaction fee splits in two the instant it is paid: half is destroyed outright, the other half pays the validators and the nominators staked behind them.
That split is read from the network's own live configuration, not from a blog post: parameter 5 fixes exactly half of every fee for destruction, and the remaining half pays the validators who produce blocks, who in turn share part of it with the nominators who staked alongside them through pool contracts.
Source TON Docs (Param 5) + tonviewer.com/config, read 2026-10-22
Agreement itself runs on Catchain, described in the project's own whitepaper as a Byzantine Fault Tolerant protocol crafted for block generation and validation, built so that sharded groups of validators can each confirm their own piece of the ledger without waiting on the whole network at once.
Source TON Docs — whitepaper Catchain, read 2026-10-22
TON's own homepage keeps the description short: " An ultrafast, scalable blockchain integrated with Telegram". It is a sentence written for newcomers, not a technical claim this page needs to take on faith; the sections below check the parts that can actually be measured.
Source ton.org, read 2026-10-22
Is the code actually open?
Published, yes, under two different licences at once: files in this repository carry either a GPL-2.0 or an LGPL-2.0 header, and no single licence file covers the whole tree, which is why GitHub’s own detector answers NOASSERTION. No audit sits in the core repository either; the only reports we found cover a separate multisig wallet contract.
On other pages in this catalogue, NOASSERTION has usually meant GitHub's detector got something simple wrong. Here it is arguably right to stay silent: two short header templates sit at the root, one for files released under the GPL-2.0, one for the LGPL-2.0, and only the LGPL text exists in full in the repository, as LICENSE.LGPL. No single file states terms for the whole codebase, because no single licence covers it.
Source ton-blockchain/ton — GPLv2, LGPLv2, LICENSE.LGPL, et crypto/vm/cp0.cpp, read 2026-10-22
Source GitHub, read 2026-10-22
A licence says who may reuse the code; it says nothing about whether anyone has looked for flaws in it. Walking the root of the repository turns up no directory of audits at all for the protocol itself.
Two dated reports do exist, from Zellic and from Trail of Bits, but they cover a multisignature wallet contract kept in a separate repository, not the consensus or validator code this page is about. Adjacent is not the same as covered, and the distinction matters more here than the raw count of firms involved.
Source ton-blockchain/multisig-contract-v2 — dossier audits, read 2026-10-22
Is anyone still working on it?
Yes: 367 commits from 14 distinct Git identities landed in the 90 days we measured, the most recent two days before the repository’s own pushed_at timestamp, a gap worth naming rather than smoothing over. Protocol upgrades move through a separate, public proposal repository open since June 2022, not through those commits alone.
That commit count is a window, not a total, and it slides on its own: the fenced period ends the day we read it and begins exactly ninety days earlier.
Source GitHub, read 2026-10-22
The repository's own pushed_at timestamp names a date two days after the newest commit we could read on its default branch, which is not a sign of anything being hidden: the field moves whenever any branch is pushed, and the commit listing only ever reads the one branch. We report the gap rather than quietly picking one number.
Source GitHub API (repo) vs. GitHub API (commits, branche par défaut), read 2026-10-22
A separate track handles proposed changes to the ecosystem's own standards: on the same model as NEAR's own numbered proposal repository, TON Enhancement Proposals have published 17 documents and merged 32 pull requests since it opened in June 2022. It governs token and wallet formats, not the consensus rules covered lower on this page.
Source ton-blockchain/TEPs + TON Docs (Param 11), read 2026-10-22
What shows it is running
- The chain responds — masterchain height 100,586,253
- The repository is actively worked on — 367 commits in the 90 days to 2026-10-22, 14 distinct Git identities
Source toncenter.com · GitHub, read 2026-10-22
- The core repository is made public
- The TON Enhancement Proposals repository opens
- TON announces the return to the name Gram
- Start of the 90-day window we measured
- This page, checked and published
Where does it actually run?
On its own chain, which we checked responds: a public node answered with the current masterchain height on the day we read it. Unlike a token that settles on someone else’s ledger, TON runs end to end on infrastructure it controls itself, with no second chain standing behind it.
We read that height from the network's own public endpoint rather than from a dashboard, which only ever reports what the chain itself has already finalised.
Source toncenter.com, read 2026-10-22
That matters because several projects on this site settle only on top of someone else's base layer. TON is not one of them: everything described on this page happens on the one chain whose height we just read.
Network verified by reading its current block height on a public node.
What the token actually does
GRAM pays every transaction fee and is staked with validators through nominator pools; nothing else gives it a role in the protocol. Supply carries no cap at all, growing by 1.7 GRAM per masterchain block and 1 GRAM per basechain block, while holders themselves cast no vote over any of these numbers.
Out of 5,270,442,518.387 GRAM already issued, 2,832,544,167.398 circulate today, according to the aggregator we read; we did not read either figure directly on chain, and the gap between the two is not explained by any primary source we found.
Source CoinGecko, read 2026-10-22
New GRAM keeps entering that total with every block: the network's own live configuration pays 1.7 GRAM for each masterchain block and 1 GRAM for each basechain block, a rate third-party trackers annualise at roughly 0.6% of supply a year, a figure we have not recomputed ourselves.
Source tonviewer.com/config (Param 14), read 2026-10-22
None of that is decided by a GRAM vote. Changes to either number move only through 75% of validators, weighted by their own stake, confirming the same proposal across several rounds, the same mechanism covered under how other networks structure their own upgrades.
- In circulation2,832,544,167.398
- Issued, not circulating2,437,898,350.989
- What the token is forDirectly verified
- How many existThird-party supported
- How new ones appearDirectly verified
- Who received themNot verified
- Who can change the rulesDirectly verified
The KLEAR3 rating
3.7out of 5 in the KLEAR3 rating
Each axis gets 0 to 5 from the facts in the register, against thresholds written in advance. The overall score is their weighted average, and it only appears once at least 5 of the 6 axes rest on a measured fact.
- Audits ×1.3
- Open code ×1.2
- Business model ×1.1
- Token alignment ×1
- Governance ×1
- Maturity ×0.7
- Open code5
public repository · GPL-2.0-or-later / LGPL-2.0-or-later (mixte, par fichier) licence · 59 published releases · 367 commits in 90 days
- Audits3
code reviewed in the open: 367 commits in 90 days, 7 years in production
What holds it back 2 public audits around the token — the bridge, the cross-chain transfer — none on the contract itself · no report opened: we do not know what they found
- Business model5
business model published by the protocol · paid by whoever sends the transaction · collected by pool operators and their delegators · half of every fee is destroyed outright; the other half pays the validators who produce blocks and the nominators who staked with them
- Governance3
decision mechanism published · 17 improvement proposals published
- Token alignment2
supply measured, with no cap: nothing bounds issuance · circulating share known · emission schedule published
What holds it back fate of the initial allocations not established
- Maturity4
7 years of public code · 1 network verified by us
We rate the protocol: how it is built, how much of it can be checked, how its token lines up. Never an investment. A high score is not advice to buy, and a low one is not advice to sell.
What we could not establish
Two things above all. Nobody has published, at a source we could verify, how the gap between circulating and total supply is allocated, or on what schedule. And the annualised inflation rate often quoted for GRAM is a third-party estimate we have not recomputed ourselves from the chain.
Both gaps are closeable, and neither is proof of anything hidden: a breakdown we did not find at a primary source is not the same thing as a breakdown that does not exist, and an estimate we have not recomputed is not the same thing as an estimate that is wrong.
Source CoinGecko, read 2026-10-22
Frequently asked questions
Is Gram the same token as Toncoin?
Yes. GRAM is the current name of the same network currency that traded as Toncoin for several years, and as Gram before that: Wikipedia records the project announcing a return to the original name on 1 June 2026, reviving the term used in its first white paper.
The project's own communication reflects the same shift. blog.ton.org no longer serves a blog at all: the entire domain now answers with an HTTP 301 redirect straight to a Telegram channel named t.me/gram.
Nothing about the underlying chain changed with the name. The repository, the validators, and the fee mechanism described on this page are the same ones that ran under Toncoin, only the ticker and the marketing have moved.
Even the technical documentation never fully left the old name behind. The page describing TON's fee-burning parameter still calls the units it destroys "Gram-denominated […] fees," a word choice the June 2026 announcement simply made official again.
Can GRAM holders vote on how the protocol works?
Not by holding the token, no. Changes to numbered configuration parameters, including the fee-burn ratio and the block reward itself, pass only when more than three-quarters of validators, weighted by their own stake, confirm the same proposal across several consecutive rounds.
A separate, public repository does exist for proposing changes, called TEPs. It has published seventeen numbered proposals and merged thirty-two pull requests since June 2022, but it standardises token and wallet formats, not the consensus rules a validator vote controls.
The two tracks answer different questions. TEPs let the ecosystem agree on a shared format without touching the chain itself; the validator vote is the only mechanism that can actually change what the chain enforces, and GRAM balance plays no part in either one.
That is a different shape of governance from a chain whose validators vote with no reward attached: TON's validators who vote on these parameters are the ones paid by this page's fee split.
Has The Open Network’s core protocol been audited?
Not that we found. The repository behind the protocol itself carries no audits directory, and a full listing of its root confirms it. Two public reports do exist from named firms, but they cover a separate multisig wallet contract, not the consensus or validator code this page describes.
Those two reports, from Zellic and from Trail of Bits, both name the same target: a multisignature wallet contract kept in its own separate repository, not the chain's own source code. The Trail of Bits report is dated March 2024; we could not confirm a date on Zellic's.
Trail of Bits itself says, in a 2025 post, that it has reviewed TON's "critical infrastructure" since 2022, without naming which parts. A claim that broad is not a dated report we can open and read, and this page only counts the second, verifiable kind.
Where to read on, at the source — every address answered 200 on 2026-10-22.
Next: our Ethereum profile covers a chain that burns only the base fee and pays the rest straight to validators, and our Cardano profile runs the same split between stake pools and the nominators behind them for who actually collects a fee.
Ask an assistant to summarise it and check what it claims.