Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said Monday that The Open Network's native cryptocurrency (TON) will be renamed Gram, reviving the original name proposed in the project's first white paper as part of his ongoing "Make TON Great Again" initiative.
"Gram was the original name of TON's currency in the first white paper," Durov wrote in a Telegram post. "We're returning to our roots — and starting a new chapter."
The transition is expected to take around three weeks, according to Durov, who said TON will remain the name of the blockchain while Gram becomes the name of the native currency.
The rebrand is the fourth of seven planned steps in Durov's MTONGA campaign, though the remaining three steps have not yet been publicly disclosed.
Durov first outlined the transition in April when he celebrated a network upgrade that he said made TON "ten times faster" and introduced sub-second transaction settling.
The other two steps that have been revealed included reducing transaction fees by roughly sixfold and announcing plans for Telegram to replace the TON Foundation as the ecosystem's primary steward and largest validator.
The Gram rebranding restores the name originally envisioned by Telegram's blockchain project, which referred to TON, an acronym of Telegram Open Network at the time, and its native Gram cryptocurrency.
Telegram launched the original TON project in 2018 but abandoned it in 2020 after a contentious legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission forced Telegram to halt sales of its Gram tokens, saying it violated securities laws.
This then led to a slew of lawsuits from investors seeking refunds on their token purchases.