Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced that this summer, a native non-custodial Gram wallet will be built into all Telegram apps, offering zero-fee instant transfers to over 1 billion users. GRAM rose about 8% to $1.53 in response. This wallet is different from the existing third-party operated @wallet bot; it is developed by Telegram itself, allowing users to directly control their private keys. During the window period where super apps like X Money and Meta's stablecoin payment are competing to enter, Durov bets on a crypto-native route, but the "largest scale" deployment promise in human history still lacks technical details and a clear timeline.

Pavel Durov announced on July 21 on his Telegram channel that this summer, the native non-custodial Gram wallet will be built into every Telegram app, providing instant, zero-fee cryptocurrency transfer services for over 1 billion monthly active users.

Durov characterized this release as "the largest scale deployment of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history." In contrast, the most widely used self-custody wallet in the crypto space, MetaMask, has tens of millions of users and has never had any crypto wallet start with a user base of 1 billion.

Completely different from the existing @wallet, Telegram is getting involved directly

This new wallet fundamentally differs from the existing @wallet bot within Telegram.

According to Decrypt, the current @wallet is a mini-program developed and operated by an independent third-party company, The Open Platform (TOP), and is not an official Telegram product. This service has over 150 million registered users, and the default mode is custodial (where a third party manages the user's private keys), requiring users to actively switch to use its self-custody layer.

The new wallet announced by Durov is a function natively embedded in the Telegram app, designed from the start to be non-custodial, allowing users to control their private keys and assets. Non-custodial means there is no intermediary that can freeze, seize, or block transactions.

According to BeInCrypto, TOP founder Andrew Rogozov confirmed that the current custodial @wallet service will continue to operate independently. However, key questions remain unanswered, such as whether the old and new wallets will coexist, which assets besides Gram the new wallet will support, and how it will manage private key management for ordinary users who have never interacted with cryptocurrencies.

GRAM rose about 8%, but is still 88% away from the previous high

After the announcement, GRAM (originally Toncoin, the native token of the TON blockchain) rose about 8.5% to around $1.53 within 24 hours, with a market capitalization of approximately $4.18 billion. According to CoinMarketCap data, this partially offsets a cumulative decline of about 25% since July, but there is still distance to a substantive reversal.

The 200-day exponential moving average of GRAM is far above the current price, indicating that the long-term trend remains bearish. The historical highest price of the token was $8.25 (during the Telegram "Tap-to-Earn" gaming craze in June 2024), and it reached an intra-year high of $2.89 when Telegram announced the takeover of the TON network in May 2026. It would require an approximately 88% increase from the current price to return to the May high.

From SEC lawsuit to "Make TON Great Again," Durov's seven-year return battle

This wallet deployment is the latest chapter in a narrative that began in 2018.

In 2018, Telegram raised $1.7 billion for the TON blockchain project, planning to issue a token called Gram. Following this, the SEC sued, deeming the token an unregistered security. In 2020, Telegram reached a settlement with the SEC, refunding investors $1.2 billion and paying a $18.5 million fine, effectively exiting the project. Community developers took over, renaming the token Toncoin and operating it independently for several years.

In 2026, Durov regained control of the TON network and launched a seven-step roadmap named "Make TON Great Again" (MTONGA). The publicly completed steps include: Catchain 2.0 upgrade achieving a tenfold speed increase and sub-second transaction confirmations; reducing base transaction fees sixfold; Telegram becoming the largest validator on the network; and a token name change (from Toncoin back to Gram) approved by 81% of the community voting on June 15. The wallet integration may be the fifth step, while the remaining three steps have yet to be disclosed.

Super app payment battle heats up, Telegram chooses a crypto-native route

Durov's wallet announcement comes at a time when multiple super apps are intensively laying out payment functions.

According to Glitchwire, X Money under Elon Musk launched on June 26 for US Premium subscribers, offering a 6% annual yield, Visa Direct peer-to-peer transfers, and 3% cash back, but currently only supports fiat currency, with crypto and stock trading functionalities listed on the roadmap but not yet launched. Meta is also restructuring its digital payment options, reportedly inviting third-party stablecoin providers to collaborate, planning to integrate stablecoin payments into WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook in the second half of 2026.

The route choices of the three super apps form a stark contrast: X Money takes a compliant fiat route (holding remittance licenses in over 40 states), Meta explores a middle ground with stablecoins, while Telegram directly bets on a crypto-native non-custodial wallet. Telegram's advantage lies in its user base (over 1 billion monthly active users) and natural affinity for the crypto community, while the risk lies in the user education costs and regulatory uncertainties associated with a non-custodial model.

The zero-fee promise still lacks key details

Durov's promised "zero fees" is another critical issue to watch. Most crypto wallets still charge network fees, even if the amounts are small. Telegram may bypass gas fees through internal subsidies or by adopting off-chain settlement methods, but specific technical plans have yet to be disclosed.

According to CryptoBriefing, in July 2025, Telegram had launched a non-custodial TON Wallet for 87 million US users as a proof of concept. This deployment demonstrated that communication apps can distribute wallet infrastructure on a large scale without generating traditional friction for crypto onboarding, but there remains a significant gap between the number of active wallets on-chain and the user base.

Besides "this summer," Durov did not provide a more specific launch date.