Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, the cryptocurrency market has been bleak, but GRAM (TON) has shown an opposing trend, becoming one of the few tokens that have risen. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov took this opportunity to state that the market capitalization of GRAM is "seriously undervalued."

However, will the founder's optimistic expectations be recognized by the market? Does GRAM possess the ecological strength to support a high valuation?

Durov confidently claims GRAM will be in the top three, yet the coin price struggles to conceal its downtrend

Affected by factors such as rising macro hawkish expectations, tech stocks being sold off, continuous outflows of ETF funds, and increasing geopolitical risks, the cryptocurrency market has generally declined recently, with market sentiment in a state of fear.

However, GRAM has exhibited an independent trend, not following the overall market downturn, but instead rising against it. According to CoinGecko data, GRAM is one of the popular tokens receiving considerable attention in the past 24 hours and has the second-largest increase among the top 100 tokens by market capitalization. Although the increase is only 5.3%, it has shown certain resilience during a market-wide decline.

Durov subsequently expressed his optimism about GRAM publicly. He believes that GRAM is the only cryptocurrency that has truly integrated into a large social ecosystem and that its current market capitalization is still seriously undervalued, asserting it should rank among the top three in the cryptocurrency market capitalization rankings, and he believes this goal can be achieved in the future.

In addition to making public statements, Durov also updated his personal profile on X, adding the identity label of “TON blockchain founder (2019),” further demonstrating his determination to re-invest in the TON ecosystem.

As the founder of the globally renowned instant messaging platform Telegram, Durov's public statements quickly brought more market attention to GRAM and somewhat boosted market sentiment.

In fact, TON (Telegram Open Network) was initially launched under the leadership of Telegram, with its native token called GRAM. However, due to regulatory lawsuits in the United States, Telegram was ultimately forced to withdraw from the project, and TON was subsequently taken over by independent developers and the TON Foundation, with the native token renamed Toncoin (TON). For quite a long time, Durov publicly emphasized that he had no direct relationship with the project.

It wasn't until May of this year that Durov announced he would take back control of Ton and rename the token back to GRAM, becoming the main driving force and largest validator of the L1 network. To promote TON's deep integration into the Telegram ecosystem, becoming the native payment and application infrastructure, Durov also launched a seven-step strategic plan called "Make TON Great Again (MTGA)."

However, from the performance of the coin price, GRAM has not continued to strengthen with the advancement of the strategy, entering a downward channel again after a short-term rebound. CoinGecko data shows that since reaching a high of $2.7 in May, GRAM has fallen by about 55.1%; compared to its historical high, the decline reaches 85.3%.

Surge in wallets but insufficient adoption, Telegram's traffic cannot hide ecological shortcomings

In addition to GRAM's counter-trend performance, Durov also released the latest data on the ecosystem level, trying to further prove its growth potential.

According to Durov's disclosures, self-custodial Gram wallets on Telegram have recently experienced large-scale activations, seen by the market as a positive sign of increased ecological adoption, further boosting market bullish expectations for GRAM.

The Gram wallet is a native self-custodial cryptocurrency wallet launched by Telegram in July 2026. Thanks to being directly embedded within Telegram, which has over 1 billion users, this wallet was once considered one of the largest attempts to promote a self-custodial wallet in the cryptocurrency industry. The wallet was initially opened to a select group of invited users and gradually became fully available to Telegram's global users starting October 9.

Unlike traditional cryptocurrency wallets that require downloading an application, creating an account, and setting up a mnemonic phrase, the Gram wallet introduced an automatic activation mechanism. Users do not need to register actively or make complex settings; as long as their Telegram account receives GRAM from others (even if it's just 0.1 coins), the wallet will be automatically activated and appear in the Telegram settings interface. This design turns the transfer itself into the entry point for wallet activation, significantly lowering user experience barriers.

With the expansion of wallet accessibility and the low-threshold activation mechanism, the number of Gram wallets has surged recently. According to GRAM Explorer data, as of November 12, the number of self-custodial Gram wallets on Telegram has exceeded 3.53 million, with nearly 650,000 added in just the past 48 hours.

However, the rapid increase in wallet activations does not mean that the actual adoption rate has increased in tandem. From on-chain activity, GRAM Explorer data shows that as of November 12, the number of active addresses for Gram wallets on that day was about 53,000, with approximately 66,000 transactions. Compared to the total number of wallets, the daily active address ratio is only about 1.5%, with a large number of wallets remaining inactive.

Meanwhile, the actual number of wallet addresses holding GRAM is only about 188,000, collectively holding about 1.683 million GRAM, worth approximately $2.053 million at current prices. The number of actual token-holding addresses and their holding scale are relatively limited.

Although Telegram's vast user base indeed provides GRAM with unparalleled traffic access, whether this traffic can further convert into real on-chain activity, long-term holding demand, and sustained economic value, remains to be validated.

Beyond user conversion, the TON blockchain's own ecological development also faces challenges. Currently, Telegram almost serves as the primary user entry point and application distribution channel for the TON ecosystem. This deep binding may aid in rapidly importing users and lowering application client acquisition barriers, but it also makes TON's development largely reliant on Telegram, without having independently established a diversified ecosystem.

Data from DeFillama shows that as of November 12, the total value locked (TVL) in TON is only about $45.74 million, far from the historical peak of approximately $780 million, and liquidity is primarily concentrated in two applications, Tonstakers and Stakee. Overall, the TON ecosystem still lacks sufficiently rich application scenarios and ongoing capital inflows, failing to form a scalable and sustainable on-chain economy. Meanwhile, the high development threshold also somewhat limits developer entry, hindering the diversified development of ecological applications.

In terms of token economics, GRAM also faces certain inflationary pressures. In April of this year, after the TON team implemented a block generation speed upgrade, the new block generation speed increased to five to six times the original rate, accelerating the block reward output speed, driving the annual token inflation rate up from about 0.6% to about 4%. With the continuous influx of new tokens into the market brought by validator rewards, the supply pressure faced by GRAM has further increased.

Undoubtedly, Telegram provides TON with a traffic entry point that other public chains find hard to match, and Durov's return also injects new developmental momentum into the ecosystem. However, from traffic import to real adoption, from ecological expansion to value capture, TON still has many hurdles to overcome. Durov may have outlined the vision, but ultimately, it still requires ecological development and market performance to prove it.

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