The cryptocurrency token planned for Telegram’s TON was called Gram. Telegram announced Gram as the native cryptocurrency of its Telegram Open Network, commonly abbreviated TON.
The project emerged in 2017 as Telegram explored a blockchain-based ecosystem for payments, applications, and services. Telegram and associated companies raised about $1.7 billion through private sales of Gram tokens, while the network’s technical documentation described how the blockchain was intended to operate at large scale.
Gram was never launched as a public Telegram cryptocurrency. In 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission challenged the token offering, and Telegram ultimately agreed in 2020 to stop work on TON, return funds to investors, and pay an $18.5 million civil penalty.
A major modern mix-up is Toncoin. Independent developers continued the open-sourced TON code after Telegram withdrew, and the revived network adopted Toncoin as its native asset. Toncoin is therefore associated with today’s TON Blockchain, but Gram is the historically correct name for Telegram’s original planned token.