Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says Gram Wallet is ready for use and has begun rolling out to a limited group of users, marking the first stage of what the company has described as the largest deployment of a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet to date. Durov announced the launch on August 31, fulfilling a commitment he made in July to begin deploying the wallet before the end of summer. Access remains restricted for now. Telegram plans to gradually enable Gram Wallet for additional users over the next several weeks, ultimately targeting the messaging platform’s audience of more than one billion people.
Unlike a conventional custodial exchange account, Gram Wallet is non-custodial. Users retain control over their assets rather than depositing them with Telegram or another centralized intermediary. Durov has also said the wallet will support instant, zero-fee cryptocurrency transactions.
Telegram Makes Self-Custody a Native Feature
The rollout represents a significant change to Telegram‘s existing crypto infrastructure. Telegram already provides access to Wallet in Telegram, which has offered custodial and self-custodial cryptocurrency functionality and previously reported more than 150 million registered users. Gram Wallet will instead become Telegram’s native self-custodial wallet and is being positioned primarily around payments, transfers and purchases directly inside the messaging ecosystem.
Telegram Wallet will remain focused on broader cryptocurrency services, including trading, investing and support for assets across multiple blockchains. Telegram is therefore separating two functions that were previously more closely combined: a native self-custody layer designed for everyday use and a broader crypto-financial platform offering additional services. One important technical milestone occurred before Monday’s rollout. Durov said validators approved the smart contract underpinning Gram Wallet.
That architecture means future wallet upgrades should not require users to undergo complicated migrations from one wallet contract to another, addressing one of the usability problems that can make non-custodial applications difficult for mainstream users. Telegram is betting that reducing those technical frictions can make self-custody practical for an audience far larger than crypto’s existing user base.
Gram Revives a Name From Telegram’s SEC Battle
The Gram branding carries substantial historical significance. Telegram originally raised approximately $1.7 billion from investors in 2018 to develop the Telegram Open Network and its planned Gram cryptocurrency. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Telegram in 2019, arguing that the planned distribution constituted an unregistered securities offering. Telegram eventually abandoned the project, agreed to return approximately $1.2 billion to investors and paid an $18.5 million civil penalty. The open-source technology subsequently continued independently as The Open Network, or TON.
The relationship changed again in 2026. Toncoin was rebranded as Gram, while Telegram replaced the TON Foundation as the ecosystem’s primary steward and became its largest validator, reconnecting Durov‘s company much more directly with the blockchain infrastructure that originated from Telegram’s earlier project. Gram Wallet now takes that integration directly to users. The potential scale is unusual even by cryptocurrency standards. Most major self-custodial wallets measure their active audiences in the tens of millions. Telegram already has more than one billion users who could eventually receive a crypto wallet without separately downloading a dedicated application.
That does not mean one billion people will immediately become cryptocurrency users. Wallet availability, funded wallets and active blockchain users are fundamentally different metrics, and Telegram has not published adoption targets for the new product. The phased rollout will therefore provide the first meaningful evidence of whether distribution through a mainstream messaging application can overcome one of crypto’s longest-standing barriers: convincing ordinary users to set up and manage a self-custodial wallet. For now, Gram Wallet has crossed the first threshold. It is no longer a promised summer product. The wallet is operational and reaching real Telegram accounts, with the much larger test beginning as access expands from today’s selected users toward Telegram’s billion-plus global audience.
