Your wallet starts with your Telegram account

When Pavel Durov announced the built-in non-custodial Gram Wallet, we assumed there probably would not be anything fundamentally new to expect. But it looks like one key piece of that future wallet may have been sitting in public for months. Back in winter, Lagus, one of the TON Core developers, published an experimental Telegram Wallet — and after Durov’s recent announcement, he directly hinted that the future mass rollout may be tied to this exact idea.

The main idea behind Telegram Wallet is to remove the seed phrase entirely. Users do not need to write down 24 words or store them anywhere: the wallet is created for a specific Telegram account, and every action is confirmed with a cryptographic signature through the Telegram app itself. At the same time, the funds in the wallet still belong to you, rather than being held by a centralized service.

In recent years, many crypto wallets have been moving toward the social login model: instead of saving a seed phrase, users create and recover a wallet through a Google or Apple account. Telegram Wallet follows the same idea, but uses Telegram itself as the login layer. This makes the wallet dependent on access to the messenger, but significantly lowers the barrier to entry.

As the developer explains, this setup is possible specifically because of TON’s architecture, where every wallet is essentially its own smart contract. That makes it possible to change the authorization logic itself — for example, replacing a private-key signature with confirmation through Telegram — while keeping the rest of the wallet’s functionality intact. In Lagus’s version, this includes the V5 features we wrote about earlier.

There is still no confirmation that this architecture will actually become the foundation of the future Gram Wallet. But the idea itself looks realistic and could make onboarding much easier by simplifying crypto access for millions of Telegram users. Hopefully, we will find out how it really works before the end of the summer.

@thedailyton

Hope for the best — prepare for the wallet

Pavel Durov broke a months-long silence on TON with a big announcement: this summer, Telegram plans "the largest" launch of a non-custodial crypto wallet. The Gram Wallet is promised to be “brought into all Telegram apps," putting crypto access in the hands of a billion-plus user base. Sounds ambitious — let's try to figure out what it actually means.

Right now, the frontrunner for integration looks like the Gram Wallet by My Wallet — wallet.ton.org already points there. But the team told RBC Crypto that their app would only be an "extended version of the future built-in Telegram wallet." How exactly this will work in practice is still murky, but it's clear Telegram is building something of its own.

What's interesting is that Telegram has been down this road before. Back in 2019, a Gram wallet showed up in an alpha client build, complete with its own dedicated Terms of Service still live on Telegram's website. The desktop wallet source code also remains on GitHub. In a sense, this new announcement brings us full circle to a product Telegram was about to ship before Telegram Open Network was shut down.

That said, there's reason to keep expectations in check. Back in late 2022, Durov promised a suite of decentralized tools — including a non-custodial wallet and a DEX. Nearly four years later, none of that has reached users. And it's unlikely the Telegram team has been quietly building a new wallet this whole time.

As we noted in our piece on attention economics, Telegram rarely runs multiple major tracks in parallel for years. The team grabs onto a narrative and hyperfocuses on it for a while. So it's entirely possible that serious Gram Wallet development is only starting now — if it starts at all — after this public announcement.

So for now, we’re not holding our breath for anything groundbreaking. The most likely outcome is that Telegram embeds a basic Gram wallet into the messenger — roughly the same thing it was planning to ship six years ago. That alone would still be a big deal, but as always, the devil's in the details. We'll see what Gram Wallet actually looks like on release.

@thedailyton

Life after zero fees

Two weeks ago, Tonnel’s developer refused to introduce a 2% fee on Telegram Gifts trading, even though all other marketplaces had collectively agreed to do so. Back then, the situation turned into a public back-and-forth between Freeman and Telegram’s in-house designer Adler Toberg. Now that the emotions have cooled down, let’s look at the numbers and see how it played out.

According to Dune data, the zero-fee bet worked. Before July 13, Tonnel accounted for around 3.5% of total Gifts trading volume. On the day the fee was reduced, its share jumped to almost 25% and later stabilized around 12–15%.

Over the past week, overall market volume dropped by roughly one-third, but Tonnel still managed to grow its own numbers. In other words, zero fees helped the marketplace pull in a meaningful share of the market.

Interestingly, Freeman did not stop at lower fees and keeps improving the marketplace. For example, Tonnel added Dump Sell mode today — users can now sell up to ten gifts at once into the best buyer bids. Let’s see where this marketplace fight goes next.

@thedailyton

Who is running TON and Telegram’s social accounts?

It has been more than a month since the last post in the @gram channel. As a reminder, the latest post there came out on June 15 and was signed by Pavel Durov. Since then, Telegram’s official channels have not published any new messages. So far, this is the longest pause between MTONGA steps.

That does not mean communication around the blockchain has disappeared completely — it has just moved mostly to X. The TON account used to post regularly about ecosystem projects and internal updates, but that format has mostly faded. These days, the account is more focused on TON x Telegram content, replies to other accounts, and regular crypto shitposting.

Interestingly, around the same time, Telegram’s X account also seemed to shift its content strategy. It has become much more active, replying to other accounts more often, jumping into global news cycles, and posting provocative takes that often rack up hundreds of thousands of views.

Because of this, some people in the community have started to suspect that both accounts may now be run by the same person. Alerts from the @TwitterMonitoring channel, which tracks posts from Telegram and TON, make it easy to see that the two accounts are often active on X during the same hours: one starts posting shortly after the other, or vice versa.

If this theory is close to the truth, the reshuffle would make sense. After the effective reboot of TON Foundation, much of the old team was sidelined, and the people who used to handle social media may have changed as well.

What exactly does this shift in communication strategy mean? Honestly, we do not really know either. So we would be curious to read your theories in the comments.

@thedailyton

Is TON’s Mini App era coming to an end?

Today, Tonkeeper announced that it will shut down the mini app version of its wallet on July 27. The decision is not exactly surprising: according to the team, most users have long since moved to the mobile apps, so it makes more sense to focus resources on the iOS and Android clients. At the same time, the activity counter still shows around 40,000 monthly users in the Tonkeeper Mini App.

The move says a lot about what happened to the Mini App market after last year’s hype cycle. According to Find Mini App, monthly active users for Telegram Mini Apps have fallen from 1.54 billion in April 2024 to around 110 million today. Things look even worse for the former leaders of the tap-to-earn boom: MAU for Hamster Kombat and DOGS is down more than 99%, with both apps now sitting below 1 million monthly users.

Interestingly, traditional text bots seem to be doing noticeably better. Their activity continues to grow, largely thanks to AI agents and GPT bots, where users do not need a separate interface: they just send a message and get a result back.

Telegram itself seems to be moving in the same direction. Recently, some users got access to BotCloud, a new feature for bot developers that will let apps run directly on Telegram’s infrastructure. Developers will no longer need to spin up their own servers: JavaScript code can be inserted directly into BotFather, and Telegram will execute it in the cloud.

Well, let’s see where this goes. Maybe the next step of MTONGA will be tied to the new bot platform after all. We should find out soon.

@thedailyton

A small TON DNS feature you may have missed

TON DNS has been part of the ecosystem for a while — the first auctions launched four years ago. Since then, .ton domains have become human-readable wallet names, entry points for TON Sites, and collectible assets in their own right. But honestly, they still have not found a major everyday use case: most of the time, a domain just sits in someone’s wallet.

Still, TON DNS has one small but useful feature: subdomains. If you own example.ton, you can add separate addresses such as main.example.ton, v5.example.ton, xrocket.example.ton, or savings.example.ton and link them to different wallets. One can be your main address, another can point to a new wallet version, and a third can be used for an exchange deposit address. And if you want to use the domain more broadly, a subdomain can also point to a TON Site or a bag in TON Storage.

Technically, subdomains are configured through a separate smart contract: TON documentation provides ready-made manual-dns and auto-dns options for this. But regular users are unlikely to dive into smart contracts just for that. This is where a community-built interface comes in: at howtorunsite.ton.run/subdomains, you can connect your wallet, choose a domain, add a subdomain, and specify where it should point. Better yet, adding a subdomain costs almost nothing, while a single domain can store up to 2^256 DNS records.

What is especially nice is that this is not limited to .ton domains. Collectible Telegram usernames from Fragment are also compatible with TON DNS, so if you own something like name.t.me, you can add subdomains to it as well and use them inside the TON network.

The practical value here is not just convenience, but also security. A year ago, in our #antiscam series, we wrote about address poisoning: scammers send a tiny transaction from a lookalike address and hope that next time the user copies the fake address from their transaction history. Using subdomains instead can significantly reduce the risk of that mistake.

Once configured, subdomains immediately start working in popular TON wallets and explorers: in a wallet, you can send funds to a subdomain instead of a long address, and in an explorer, you can open the corresponding wallet directly. If you already own a nice domain, stop letting it sit there like a collectible — it is time to make it do something useful.

@thedailyton

Telegram’s day without t.me

Yesterday evening, Telegram had an unpleasant incident: the t.me domain stopped resolving for users around the world. The issue was with the domain itself, which suddenly dropped out of the .me DNS zone. At one point, even Pavel Durov had to step in and publicly ask the .me registry what had happened.

t.me has now been restored and is working again. Still, the incident showed how vulnerable even the largest internet services remain when their main entry point depends on a traditional domain name. Just in case, a reminder: Telegram also has other official link domains — telegram.me and telegram.dog. If t.me runs into problems again, they can be used as temporary alternatives.

When TON was being developed, the risks of relying on traditional DNS were clearly on the table. That is why the ecosystem introduced a separate layer for websites — TON Sites, where a website is not tied to familiar Web2 infrastructure and can be opened through a .ton domain. Interestingly, Telegram already has partial support for such addresses: for example, the official TON Foundation website, foundation.ton, still opens directly inside the app.

There is a catch, though. Telegram opens .ton sites through the centralized magic.org relay, and it works very selectively. Only certain sites approved by Telegram are available through this gateway. If you create your own .ton site, you will not be able to open it inside Telegram.

By the way, creating TON Sites has become noticeably easier since our last post on the topic. For example, app.resistance.dog lets you deploy a template-based site or upload your own files in just a few clicks. The recently launched TON Site Builder offers a similar flow: users can choose from several templates or build a page from ready-made blocks. Best of all, it is completely free.

Try building your own .ton site — it takes much less time than it used to. Hopefully, after the t.me incident, TON Sites will get a little more attention, and Telegram will eventually get around to links in the t.ton format. At least let’s write that down as an idea for future MTONGA steps.

@thedailyton

JUST IN: The t.me domain is available again.

JUST IN: The t.me domain has been blocked for unknown reasons. As a result, Telegram links using the t.me format can no longer be opened in web browsers.

@thedailyton

Pump & dump explained: the TAC and EVAA case

Recently, two TON-based tokens have shown price action that looks a lot like a classic pump & dump: a sharp run-up followed by an equally fast collapse. Stories like this happen in crypto all the time — so let’s use a fresh example from our own ecosystem to break down how the scheme works.

A pump & dump is when a token’s price is first “pumped” through buying pressure and hype, after which large holders sell their holdings at a higher price. Those who enter late often buy near the top and end up deep in the red once the selling begins.

The main warning sign is pretty simple: a token starts surging without any clear news behind it. This is especially common with low-liquidity coins — in that kind of market, it is easy to push the price up, but just as easy to send it back down. Futures contracts only amplify the effect: a drop can trigger long liquidations, and forced selling creates even more pressure on the price.

This appears to be what happened with EVAA and TAC. For example, the TAC team says the token’s collapse started with a large futures sell-off in low-liquidity conditions. In EVAA’s case, users on X found that shortly before the drop, several new wallets had simultaneously accumulated around 6.7 million tokens — almost 38% of the circulating supply.

The result is clearly visible on the chart: TAC is down 94% from its peak, while EVAA is down 77%. We do not know how much those who exited before everyone else managed to make, but it is clear that some regular users lost money here. So the basic rule remains the same: do not buy a token just because it has already pumped, and do not become exit liquidity for someone else’s pump & dump.

@thedailyton

JUST IN: Major Telegram Gifts marketplaces are adding a 2% fee for collectible gift trading.

Tonnel Marketplace’s founder is pushing back and asking Telegram for answers. If the fee is mandatory, he says the project may have to shut down.

TON goes into summer mode

By mid-summer, crypto activity has predictably slowed down, and TON is no exception. After the loud MTONGA announcements, the ecosystem has shifted into wait-and-see mode: major product launches have become rare, while Pavel Durov is busy with another court hearing in France over the Telegram case.

Things have also gone quieter on the core development side. The community has already noticed that after the announcement of TON Foundation’s dissolution, activity in TON’s main GitHub repository dropped noticeably. Still, some updates are happening.

For example, a mandatory update for validators and node operators is scheduled for July 13, and a validator vote on new parameters is expected on July 15. The main part of the release is a new data exchange mechanism between nodes: TON should start passing information through the network faster, making the sub-second transactions launched in April more stable.

There is also a small but welcome update around TON Sites. ENS domains like example.eth can now point to websites hosted on TON infrastructure. In other words, the owner of a .eth domain can use it as an entry point to a TON site.

Other than that, there is not much to discuss for now. No wonder even the intern behind Telegram’s X account has switched to TikTok, where they are posting clips of themselves playing Counter-Strike. Well, it looks like the whole ecosystem has really entered summer mode — so we recommend you taking a break too. Judging by the news cycle, now is probably the best time.

@thedailyton

Off-chain accounting breaks everything again

Yesterday was not exactly a great evening for Telegram Gifts collectors. A technical vulnerability was found on MRKT, a popular marketplace, allowing users to effectively inflate their balances: sending offers without funds being deducted, canceling them while receiving extra funds, or withdrawing the same GRAM multiple times.

The whole issue came down to off-chain accounting: the marketplace handled balances, offers, and trades internally, but at some point that logic broke. The exact damage is hard to estimate right now, but according to the community, users managed to withdraw at least 14 Plush Pepes, 59 Durov’s Caps, several dozen other expensive gifts, and tens of thousands of GRAM through the bug.

In this situation, we cannot help but point out one thing: none of this would have been possible if gift trading were settled on-chain. On-chain, you simply cannot buy the same gift dozens of times without paying for it or withdraw the same GRAM over and over again.

Telegram Gifts could have become an easy entry point into crypto: a user receives or buys a gift in Telegram, sees a secondary market around it, opens a marketplace, sees prices in GRAM, and takes their first step toward crypto. But every time an off-chain layer breaks, the backlash does not just hit a specific service — it hurts the reputation of the entire TON ecosystem.

So the only advice we can give here is this: convert your gifts into NFTs and trade them on Fragment or other TON marketplaces where transactions are settled on-chain. Especially since many of them do not charge seller fees.

@thedailyton

Decentralization for show

Between the third and fourth steps of MTONGA, Pavel Durov reminded everyone that TON is one of the most decentralized blockchains in the world. The claim quickly spread: crypto influencers picked it up on X, and the updated ton.org even briefly featured a section saying TON ranked second in decentralization.

The basis for this claim is the Nakamoto coefficient. In simple terms, it shows how many validators would need to coordinate to gain critical control over the network. For PoS blockchains like TON, this comes down to stake weight: if one group gains more than one-third of the validation weight, it could potentially halt the network.

On paper, it does look decent: the largest validator, Telegram, controls around 17% of the weight, which is below the critical one-third threshold. But once you look a little deeper, that argument starts to fall apart.

The problem is that a significant share of the remaining validators also appears to be controlled by a small circle of actors, including “early miners” whose coins had not appeared on the open market for years. At the same time, only around 23% of the total GRAM supply is currently staked, which means several large anonymous wallets could, in theory, take control of the network if they wanted to.

The much-touted geographic distribution does not help much either. Yes, validators are spread across five continents, but 80% of nodes are located in just a handful of countries: the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Telegram, by the way, has all of its nodes in just two countries: the United States and the Netherlands.

The Nakamoto coefficient can be a useful metric if validators are backed by truly independent capital owners. As a marketing claim, it works well enough. But when it comes to the network’s actual decentralization, it does not say much at all.

@thedailyton

Regulators are coming for DeFi

The effects of MiCA, the European Union’s new crypto regulation, are becoming more visible in the TON ecosystem. For example, major exchanges in TON have already started showing legal notices: users are asked to accept the Terms of Service and are warned that access is restricted in certain jurisdictions.

MiCA was designed as a unified rulebook for crypto across the EU. Instead of each country having its own separate framework, crypto exchanges, custodial wallets, and other crypto service providers now need to obtain authorization and comply with EU-wide requirements. As of July 1, the rules are fully in force.

The impact is already visible in the centralized market: Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, and some other players have secured MiCA authorization, while Binance failed to get approved before the deadline and had to restrict access for EU users.

But the new rules are also reaching decentralized products. MiCA cannot switch off smart contracts themselves, but almost every DeFi protocol has one weak point: its web interface. That is why websites are starting to show legal pop-ups and restrict access for users from blocked jurisdictions.

Over the past few years, it has become clear that regulators around the world are trying harder to bring crypto into the regulatory perimeter. The good news is that in decentralized networks, smart contracts keep running no matter what.

@thedailyton

Why is crypto suddenly talking about elections?

Over the past few days, we have been reading not only crypto channels, but also political and macro analysts. Surprisingly, many of them seem to be reaching roughly the same conclusion: until November, the White House has every reason to keep markets calm and the news cycle as positive as possible. The reason is the midterms — the U.S. midterm elections.

Midterms are held halfway through a presidential term. The president is not on the ballot, but the entire House of Representatives and about one-third of the Senate are. Right now, Republicans control both chambers, which makes it easier for the Trump administration to advance its agenda. But if Democrats win a majority in at least the House, it will become much harder for Trump to push his policies through.

Over the past few months, markets have gotten used to volatility under Trump: trade wars, harsh rhetoric, and geopolitical conflicts have repeatedly hit asset prices. But now the incentives may temporarily change. Ahead of the midterms, the administration needs a calmer news backdrop. That is why some analysts are linking the rapid de-escalation around Iran to election preparations.

If this hypothesis is correct, the next few months could also be a good window for MTONGA. At the very least, major announcements are always easier to make into a rising market. Now we are waiting for Pavel Durov to reveal the next step.

@thedailyton

The final update before Telegram’s anniversary

Telegram is expected to release version 12.9.0 in the coming days. The main change is the Rich Editor: previously available only to bots, it will now become available to regular users as well. With it, users will be able to create rich messages themselves or generate them with built-in AI.

Interestingly, version 12.9.0 will likely be the last update before Telegram’s anniversary release. On August 14, the messenger turns 13, and the team often prepares major updates around that date. Three years ago, for example, Telegram introduced Stories for its birthday, while last year it completely redesigned the Android client.

What makes the timing especially interesting is that Telegram’s birthday falls roughly within the window for the final steps of MTONGA. The fourth stage effectively wrapped up today with Gram’s listing on Binance and Hyperliquid. The fifth step should be announced very soon, while closer to Telegram’s birthday we may already see its rollout — or even the announcement of the sixth stage.

And if the Telegram team suddenly needs ideas for how to celebrate the messenger’s birthday while also strengthening TON, we have already collected a few in a separate post. Now is probably the right time to revisit it.

@thedailyton

Telegram intern takes on memecoins

A few days ago, the Telegram intern behind the messenger’s X account posted his personal TON wallet. Users almost immediately started sending him memecoins, and someone even launched a token in his honor. Imagine their surprise when, just a few days later, almost all of those coins were sold.

This is not the first time something like this has happened in crypto. For years, the industry has had a strange little tradition: once a public figure’s wallet becomes known, people start sending tokens to it. Most of the time, the goal is to later write in the project description: “Look, this well-known person holds our token.” The recipient, of course, usually never asked for any of it.

The most prominent example is Vitalik Buterin. During Ethereum’s memecoin boom, people sent him tokens en masse, hoping to use his name as part of their marketing. After a while, Vitalik started getting rid of those tokens: he burned some and donated others to charity. Holders were unhappy, but he later made a fair point: he had never asked to become part of anyone else’s project.

The Telegram intern story comes with a different context. Technically, he also never asked anyone to send him tokens, but after MTONGA, it lands differently. Telegram has become TON’s new hope for a revival, and people close to the brand now carry extra weight. That makes the memecoin sell-off look especially bad. What adds even more fuel to the fire is that most of the coins were swapped not into native GRAM, but into USDT.

We have little doubt that things like this do not go unnoticed by Pavel Durov. Still, we want to believe this was not a deliberate signal to the ecosystem, but simply a bad call. The intern has already tried to smooth things over by launching a meme contest with a 100 USDT prize.

@thedailyton

You don’t need to code to build

In yesterday’s post, we argued that TON is still being carried by the small group of people who keep building despite the state of the ecosystem. But what can regular users do if they still care about TON, but do not write smart contracts?

We asked this on X, and most replies came down to the same idea: you can still contribute even if you are not a developer. Write posts, threads, and guides. Make videos. Share analysis. Explain complicated things in simple terms. And these days, building something basic does not always require deep coding skills: an AI agent and tools like Acton may already be enough to put together a simple smart contract.

Some people also brought up memecoins. That may not sound very serious, but in other ecosystems, they often become a major source of activity. On Solana, for example, a lot of attention comes from new token launches. TON has similar attempts too, but without a strong community behind them, it is much harder for those projects to reach people outside the ecosystem.

Developers in the replies also made a simple point: if you cannot write code, give feedback. If a product is confusing, inconvenient, or broken, say so. For small teams, that kind of feedback is especially valuable.

And yes, keep telling your friends about crypto, blockchain, and especially TON. And if anyone reading this happens to know Pavel Durov personally, maybe remind him about the network too. We have been waiting for the next step of MTONGA for a while now.

@thedailyton

JUST IN: Telegram is back to validating The Open Network.