Toncoin's price surged 19.5% after Pavel Durov announced its rebranding to Gram, amidst community debates over voting fairness.
Toncoin (TON) experienced a significant price increase of 19.5% following Pavel Durov's announcement to rebrand the cryptocurrency to Gram. The value surged from $1.89 to $2.26 within a day, before stabilizing around $2.
Durov, the founder of Telegram, described this rebranding as the fourth phase of the Make TON Great Again (MTONGA) initiative. He indicated that the shift back to the original name, Gram, will take approximately three weeks, while the blockchain itself will continue to operate as The Open Network (TON).
“We are going back to our roots — and starting a new chapter. This change will pave the way for what comes next,” Durov stated.
In conjunction with the announcement, a dedicated website for Gram was launched. Prior to Durov's message, a vote regarding the ticker change from TON to GRAM appeared on the TON Vote platform but was swiftly removed before a formal vote was initiated.
This development has sparked debate within the community, as some members express concerns that larger holders could unduly sway the voting process. Notably, one wallet that participated in the vote contains about 1.5 million TON, valued at roughly $3.3 million, and may be linked to a miner's wallet that withdrew nearly 45 million TON in 2020.
Initial voting results indicated that about 90% of wallets opposed the rebranding within the first 15 minutes, primarily from smaller holders collectively owning around $578,866 in TON.
Background on Gram
The name Gram is historically tied to the Telegram Open Network project that Durov attempted to launch between 2018 and 2020, which raised $1.7 billion through SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens) agreements. However, the project faced regulatory challenges when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intervened in 2019, labeling the tokens as unregistered securities.
A court ruling in 2020 affirmed the SEC's stance, leading Durov to withdraw from the project, return some investor funds, and transfer the development to an independent community, which later rebranded the project as Toncoin. Durov noted in May that TON was among the leading layer-1 networks in terms of transaction finalization.
