Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced on July 21, 2026 that the messaging app would roll out a native, non-custodial wallet across all versions of its app, targeting over 1 billion monthly active users with instant, fee-free crypto transactions.
GRAM, the native token of The Open Network (TON) blockchain, jumped around +7% on the news, from around $1.36 to over $1.50, pushing the coin’s market cap to around $4.18 billion, according to CoinGecko data.
Durov wants a Gram wallet in every Telegram app by summer
Pavel @durov is preparing what he calls the largest non-custodial wallet deployment in history, and the plan is to integrate a the-open-network:native wallet directly into every Telegram app before the end of summer.
That… pic.twitter.com/O01DkbPJfN
– BSCN (@BSCNews) July 21, 2026
This announcement constitutes the largest distribution play in the history of self-custody cryptography. As a reminder, MetaMask, the most widely used non-custodial wallet in the field, has tens of millions of users.
Telegram is proposing to put self-custody rails in front of an audience that dwarfs anything crypto has attempted before, which would mark huge progress for the space.
What Durov actually announced and what is different from what Telegram has already announced
(SOURCE: TradingView)
Telegram already operates a crypto wallet product: the @wallet bot, run by a separate company called The Open Platform, with over 150 million registered users. The key difference is that @wallet operates in custody mode by default: a company holds the keys on behalf of users, and users must actively search for them in the application.
The new wallet is native to Telegram itself, meaning it’s built into every version of the app rather than as an optional bot. It’s non-custodial from day one, so users hold the keys to their own funds, the digital equivalent of carrying cash instead of keeping money in a bank account that a third party can freeze or block.
Whether the new wallet will replace @wallet or coexist with it has not been confirmed, and Telegram has not yet revealed what assets beyond Gram it will support or how key management will work at scale for users who have never touched crypto before.
For those evaluating self-custody mechanisms more generally, a detailed analysis of how non-custodial wallets handle security and key management illustrates exactly what is at stake when an application imposes these responsibilities on the user.
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The Make TON Great Again roadmap and its place
The next Telegram story:
– Ton’s ticker has been replaced by the-open-network:native (formerly named Telegram equity ticker)
– The only L1 with a billion user app attached
– Telegram having more control over the fate of the chain and platform as the largest validator
– Me coming…— bobdbldr (@0xBobdbldr) July 21, 2026
The portfolio announcement is the next step in what Durov called the Make TON Great Again (MTONGA) roadmap. In April 2026, Durov said the TON blockchain received a 10x speed upgrade, including a 6x block rate increase bringing transactions to sub-second finality, listed as the first of seven steps in the roadmap. The second step was a 6x reduction in fees.
The name change from Toncoin to Gram in June 2026, approved by 81% of community voters, was itself a symbolic reset. Gram was the name Telegram initially chose in 2018 when it raised $1.7 billion for what it called the Telegram Open Network, before the SEC sued, arguing the tokens were unregistered securities.
Telegram settled in 2020, returned $1.2 billion to investors, paid an $18.5 million civil penalty and walked away. Community developers kept the chain alive under the name Toncoin until Durov took over the reins in 2026.
The name “restoration” was a deliberate signal that this time the project is Telegram’s again. XRP’s long legal battle with the SEC offers a notable parallel: another token whose trajectory has been fundamentally shaped by US regulatory actions, as explained in detail here.
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The price chart per gram: catalysts do not correct a bearish chart
What went wrong here? $TON / $GRAM is incredibly low pic.twitter.com/A858DCHfJQ
– VIKTOR (@thedefivillain) July 20, 2026
Gram’s 7% move following the announcement partially offset a severe 25% decline through most of July, but the broader technical picture remains challenging. The coin’s 200-day exponential moving average sits well above the current price, confirming that the macroeconomic trend remains bearish, according to TradingView data analysis by Decrypt.
The most immediate step would require an 88% rally from the current level of $1.52 just to reach Gram’s May 2026 high of $2.89 – the high set when Telegram first announced its takeover of the network. The all-time high of $8.25, reached in June 2024 during Telegram’s Tap-to-Earn gaming craze, is a whole different conversation.
The adoption gap is the real test. If just 1% of Telegram’s billions of users activate the new wallet and transact regularly, that figure multiplies by orders of magnitude. Distribution and activation are not the same thing, and Durov gave no launch date beyond “this summer.”
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The article Pavel Durov’s Native Telegram Wallet Play: What it Means for Gram’s Price appeared first on 99Bitcoins.
