Pavel Durov’s seven-step plan to rebuild Gram around Telegram is four steps in. The speed upgrade, the fee cut, the validator takeover, and the rename have all shipped. Here is what each one did, and what the three undisclosed steps might be.
Summary
- Pavel Durov’s seven step MTONGA roadmap has completed four milestones, including a speed upgrade, lower fees, Telegram’s validator takeover, and the Gram rebrand.
- Telegram has reclaimed direct influence over The Open Network, marking a major departure from the separation established after the 2020 SEC settlement.
- Three undisclosed roadmap steps remain, with traders closely watching for developments that could drive user adoption and on chain activity.
In April 2026, Pavel Durov began publishing a roadmap on his Telegram channel under a deliberately provocative name: Make TON Great Again, or MTONGA. It is a seven-step plan to transform The Open Network, the blockchain behind the token now called Gram, into the primary payment and application layer for Telegram’s roughly one billion users. Four of the seven steps have shipped. Three remain undisclosed. And each revealed step has moved the price, which is why traders treat the unannounced ones as scheduled catalysts waiting to fire.
This guide walks through what MTONGA actually is, what each of the four completed steps did, why the market has reacted the way it has, and what the three remaining steps might turn out to be. If you hold Gram, trade it, or are trying to understand why the token keeps spiking and fading, the roadmap is the framework that explains the pattern.
What MTONGA is, in one paragraph
Make TON Great Again is Durov’s name for the coordinated push, launched in April 2026, to upgrade The Open Network and bind it tightly to Telegram. The roadmap matters because it marks a reversal: Telegram built the network in 2018, abandoned it in 2020 after an SEC enforcement action, and left the independent TON Foundation to run it for years. MTONGA is Durov personally retaking the wheel, becoming the network’s largest validator, reclaiming the original Gram name, and announcing a sequence of technical and branding moves designed to make the chain fast enough and cheap enough to serve Telegram’s billion-user base. The name echoes a political slogan, but the goals are technical and strategic: speed, low fees, direct Telegram control, and a brand that Telegram’s users already recognize.
Step one: Catchain 2.0 and sub-second speed
MTONGA opened on April 9, 2026, with the upgrade that made the rest possible.
Durov announced that the network had become roughly ten times faster, with transactions confirming in under a second where they previously took around five seconds or more. The engine behind the change was Catchain 2.0, a new consensus mechanism that cut block production time from about 2.5 seconds to roughly 400 milliseconds and introduced a streaming layer that pushes updates to applications almost instantly instead of making them wait for the next block.
For users, the practical effect is that payments clear in about a second, trades execute in real time, and apps respond immediately, the responsiveness a consumer payment network needs if it is going to feel like sending a message rather than waiting on a blockchain.
There was a tradeoff worth understanding, because it touches the token’s economics.
More frequent blocks mean more validator rewards, which strengthens the incentive to stake but also raises issuance: the network’s annual inflation is expected to rise from roughly 0.6% toward 3.6% as a consequence of the faster block production. That is a meaningful increase, and it sits underneath the bull case as a quiet headwind, more tokens are created to reward the validators securing the faster chain. The speed is a genuine upgrade; the inflation bump is its cost.
Step two: the sixfold fee cut
With speed in place, the next move lowered the cost of using the network.
Base transaction fees were cut roughly sixfold, standardizing the cost at around $0.0005 per transfer regardless of network congestion. TON fees were already low compared with Ethereum or Solana, so the significance is less about the absolute saving and more about what cheap, predictable fees enable: micropayments and high-frequency applications that only make sense when each transaction costs a fraction of a cent.
A network aiming to host in-app payments, tipping, and consumer commerce for a billion people needs fees low enough that users never think about them, and the sixfold cut moves toward that, with Durov having referenced feeless transactions as a longer-term goal. The fee reduction is the economic complement to the speed upgrade: fast and nearly free is the combination a consumer payment layer requires.
Step three: Telegram becomes the largest validator
Step three was the most strategically consequential, because it changed who controls the network.
On May 4, 2026, Durov announced that Telegram would replace the Switzerland-based TON Foundation as the primary steward of The Open Network and operate as the chain’s largest validator, staking millions of tokens through the messenger’s own infrastructure.
This reversed years of deliberate separation between Telegram and the network, the separation that was built after the 2020 SEC settlement specifically to distance the company from the project. Telegram binding its corporate infrastructure and stake to the chain is the clearest signal yet that the company is committing its fate to the network, the thing the market had most wanted and most doubted since the independent foundation took over.
This move drew predictable centralization concerns, since a single dominant validator is a concentration of power, and Durov pushed back by arguing that Telegram serving as a large validator actually encourages other major players to join the validator pool as a counterbalance.
Whether that holds in practice is an open question, but the strategic point is unambiguous: after years at arm’s length, Telegram is now formally in control of the network’s direction, which is the foundation the rest of the roadmap and the entire Gram investment thesis rest on.
Step four: the Gram rename
Step four is the one most people heard about, and the one that changed the least, mechanically.
In early June, Durov announced that the native token would reclaim its original name, Gram, the name from Telegram’s 2018 whitepaper that was abandoned after the SEC forced the project to shut down in 2020.
A community vote on the TON Vote platform passed with 81.22% support, and the rename took effect on June 15, 2026, changing the token’s name and ticker from TON to GRAM while leaving the blockchain itself called The Open Network.
No token swap, migration, or claim was required: balances, addresses, staking, and contracts all carried over, and a holder of 10 Toncoin simply held 10 Gram. For most holders, the rename was a display and ticker change, not a technical event.
What made the rename matter was symbolic and strategic, not mechanical.
Reclaiming Gram reconnects the token to its origins and to the Telegram brand its users already recognize, closing a gap that always made “Toncoin” confusing to the messenger’s own audience. It also signals regulatory confidence, since reviving the name the SEC once litigated against is a statement that Telegram believes the climate has changed.
A pure rename changes no supply, no fees, and no on-chain mechanics, which is why the right way to read step four is as the branding capstone on the three technical and strategic moves that preceded it.
Why the market reacts the way it does
A clear pattern runs through all four steps, and understanding it explains why Gram keeps spiking and fading.
Markets have front-loaded the reaction into each step. The token roughly doubled from about $1.30 to a peak near $2.80 to $2.89 through the April and May announcements of the speed upgrade, fee cut, and validator takeover, pushing the market cap toward $7.6 billion and into the top 20.
Then it retraced.
The Gram rename added another double-digit candle, a roughly 19% jump toward $2.21, and then that faded too, with the token sitting near $1.67 around the time the rename actually took effect.
Each announcement produces a sharp rally that the market subsequently surrenders, which is the classic buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news rhythm applied to a roadmap with discrete, pre-signaled events.
Rallies fade because the roadmap steps, real as they are, have not yet produced the thing that would sustain a re-rating: durable user and revenue growth.
Faster blocks, cheaper fees, Telegram control, and a familiar name are all enablers; they make the network more capable of converting Telegram’s billion users into active Gram users, but they are not the conversion itself.
Until the wallet activity and payment volume show that conversion happening, each step is a promise the market rewards briefly and then discounts, which is exactly the pattern the price has traced. The steps build the runway; the takeoff is the part still unproven, and the price keeps reflecting that gap.
The three remaining steps: what they might be
Traders care most about this question, because the unannounced steps are the next catalysts.
Durov has not detailed steps five, six, and seven, but his public comments and the network’s direction point to a set of likely candidates.
Durov’s posts have referenced “performance upgrades” and “tech superiority” without specifying deliverables, which suggests at least one remaining step is further technical improvement: additional consensus refinements, more speed, or the feeless transactions he has hinted at as a longer-term goal.
A second likely theme is deeper Telegram integration, the wiring of Gram directly into the messenger’s product suite for in-app payments, tipping, and commerce, building on the USDT payments integration Telegram has already pursued as its user base nears a billion.
Reported groundwork, including a new ton.org site and improved developer tooling, points toward a developer-experience and ecosystem step designed to make building on the network faster and more attractive.
And given the rename’s regulatory symbolism and Telegram’s U.S. ambitions, a step involving expanded access, a U.S. wallet rollout, or payment partnerships is plausible, turning the network’s reach into concrete consumer use cases.
The caveat worth stating: these are educated inferences, not announcements.
Durov has revealed each step on his own timeline, usually shortly before or as it shipped, so the content and order of the final three are unknown outside Telegram.
What is known is the shape: the four completed steps moved from technical foundation (speed, fees) to strategic control (validator) to brand (rename), which suggests the remaining steps may move toward activation, turning the upgraded, Telegram-controlled, freshly branded network into one that actually converts users into economic activity.
That progression is the logic to watch as each step is revealed.
What it means for holders and traders
For holders, the roadmap is the clearest map of what to watch.
Each remaining step is a likely catalyst, and the pattern so far says the announcements produce sharp rallies that fade unless they are backed by evidence of real user and revenue growth.
The signal that matters is not the next announcement itself but whether the cumulative roadmap finally shows up in wallet activity and payment volume, the conversion that would turn the spikes into a sustained trend.
Watching the steps without watching the conversion is watching the wrong half of the story.
For traders, MTONGA is a calendar of pre-signaled events with a consistent behavioral pattern.
The front-loaded rally and subsequent fade has repeated through all four revealed steps, which makes the roadmap a tradable rhythm: the rallies have come on announcement and surrendered into the supply and the broad market between events.
The three undisclosed steps are scheduled volatility with unknown timing, and Durov’s habit of revealing each step close to delivery means the lead time is short.
The token has respected technical levels in the low $1.80s on support and stalled in the $2.80 to $2.89 zone on the roadmap-driven highs, which frames the range the steps have moved it within.
For anyone weighing the bigger picture, MTONGA is a substantive roadmap, more so than the political-slogan name suggests, and the four completed steps represent real upgrades and a real strategic reversal.
But the roadmap is the setup, not the payoff.
It makes the network capable of mass adoption without proving the adoption will come, and the three remaining steps, whatever they are, will be judged by the same standard the first four are now being judged by: not whether they ship, but whether they finally convert Telegram’s billion users into Gram’s economy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Make TON Great Again roadmap?
Make TON Great Again (MTONGA) is a seven-step plan that Pavel Durov began publishing in April 2026 to upgrade The Open Network and tie it closely to Telegram.
The goal is to make the blockchain fast and cheap enough to serve as the payment and application layer for Telegram’s roughly one billion users.
Four steps have shipped: a speed upgrade, a fee cut, Telegram becoming the largest validator, and the rename of the token to Gram.
Three steps remain undisclosed.
What are the four completed MTONGA steps?
The Catchain 2.0 upgrade made the network roughly ten times faster with sub-second transaction finality.
A sixfold fee cut lowered base transaction costs to around $0.0005.
Telegram replaced the TON Foundation as the network’s primary steward and became its largest validator.
And the native token was renamed from Toncoin to Gram, reclaiming its original 2018 name.
Sources number the steps slightly differently, but these are the four revealed milestones.
What are the three remaining MTONGA steps?
Durov has not announced steps five, six, and seven.
Based on his references to “performance upgrades” and “tech superiority,” and on the network’s direction, likely candidates include further technical improvements such as feeless transactions, deeper Telegram integration for in-app payments and commerce, improved developer tooling and a new ton.org site, and possibly expanded access or payment partnerships.
These are educated inferences, not confirmed announcements.
Why does the Gram price spike and then fall after each step?
The market front-loads its reaction into each announced step, producing a sharp rally that then fades.
The token doubled from about $1.30 to nearly $2.80 through the spring announcements before retracing, and the Gram rename added a roughly 19% jump that also faded.
The rallies fade because the roadmap steps are enablers, faster, cheaper, Telegram-controlled, freshly branded, but have not yet produced the durable user and revenue growth that would sustain a re-rating.
It is a buy-the-rumor, sell-the-news pattern applied to a roadmap.
Did the Gram rename change the token’s price or supply?
No.
The rename was a name and ticker change with no effect on supply, fees, or on-chain mechanics.
A separate part of the roadmap, the Catchain 2.0 speed upgrade, does affect economics, raising expected annual inflation from roughly 0.6% toward 3.6% because more frequent blocks generate more validator rewards.
The rename itself changed nothing mechanical; price moves around it reflected market sentiment, not the name change.
Is Telegram now in control of The Open Network?
Yes, in practical terms.
In May 2026, Telegram replaced the Switzerland-based TON Foundation as the network’s primary steward and became its largest validator, staking millions of tokens through its own infrastructure.
This reversed years of deliberate separation set up after the 2020 SEC settlement.
Durov has argued that Telegram serving as a large validator strengthens rather than weakens decentralization by encouraging other validators to join as a counterbalance, though that remains an open question.
As of June 16, 2026. Cryptocurrency markets are volatile, and details can change; verify current information with official sources before acting. This article is information, not investment advice.
