MTONGA stands for “Make TON Great Again”, the 7-step plan announced by Durov.
Telegram displaced the TON Foundation and became the largest validator on the network.
On June 1, 2026, Pavel Durov announced that Toncoin would be renamed Gram, a change that applies exclusively to the cryptoasset while The Open Network retains its name. The news moved the price of the asset 13% in the first hours. But the most relevant data was not in the rebrand: Durov described it as the fourth step of a seven-stage plan he called “Make TON Great Again,” known by its acronym MTONGA.
MTONGA is neither a technical document nor a roadmap published in a repository. It is a seven-step plan that Durov launched in April 2026 with the stated goal of turning The Open Network into the main payments and applications layer for Telegram’s approximately 950 million monthly active users. Durov did not publish the seven steps in one go: he has communicated them sequentially through his personal channel, without advance dates, which has generated a cycle in which each announcement reactivates attention on the project.
The name alludes to the political slogan “Make America Great Again”, although the objectives are cryptocurrency infrastructure. MTONGA also emerged around it as a meme-type token within the TON ecosystem, not affiliated with Telegram or Durov, which speculates on the narrative of the plan. They are two different things: Durov’s strategic plan and the token that borrowed his name.
The four steps already executed
The first step was the activation of Catchain 2.0announced on April 9, which reduced block times from about 2.5 seconds to 400 milliseconds and transaction completion from about 10 seconds to less than one.
The second step came two weeks later: network rates fell to 0.00039 TON per transaction, a six-fold reduction with a fixed rate that does not vary according to congestion, less than USD 0.00005. Durov noted that the long-term direction aims for zero commissions for most transactions, without providing a date for that goal.
The third step, on May 4, was the most significant in terms of governance: Telegram replaced the TON Foundation as the network’s primary administrator and took over as its largest validator, with a stake in collateral on a scale greater than any other single entity.
The fourth step is the change of brand or rebrand to Gram. Gram was the name of the token during the original Telegram push in 2018when the company raised $1.7 billion in a private ICO before the SEC intervened in 2020. The change does not imply an exchange of tokens or changes to the economic conditions of the asset: whoever has toncoin today will have gram upon completion of the transition, estimated in three weeks.
The three missing steps
Durov has offered no details on steps five, six and seven, and none appear in public communications to date. Analysts who track the roadmap point to TON Pay 2.0, a payments layer for instant microtransactions within Telegram, and the TON Teleport Bridge, a mechanism for bringing bitcoin liquidity to the TON ecosystem, as likely candidates. None have been officially confirmed.
The structural risk of the plan is its dependence on Telegram as an entity: if Durov’s legal situation in Europe deteriorates, or if the company’s priorities change,participation as a validator may be reduced or redirected. Added to this is that the volumes on decentralized exchanges over TON fell from 1.4 billion dollars at its peak in 2024 to 26 million in April 2026, and the total value locked in DeFi went from 766 million to 55 million in the same period.
MTONGA describes, in its first four steps, a technical and governance reconversion of a network that was under community control for six years and that returns to the orbit of its original creator. The three remaining steps, still unrevealed, will determine whether this reconversion translates into effective use or remains a market narrative.