Pavel Durov’s seven-step plan to rebuild Gram around Telegram is four steps in. The speed upgrade, the fee cut, the validator takeover, and the rename have all shipped. Here is what each one did, and what the three undisclosed steps might be.

In April 2026, Pavel Durov began publishing a roadmap on his Telegram channel under a deliberately provocative name: Make TON Great Again, or MTONGA. It is a seven-step plan to transform The Open Network, the blockchain behind the token now called Gram, into the primary payment and application layer for Telegram’s roughly one billion users. Four of the seven steps have shipped. Three remain undisclosed. And each revealed step has moved the price, which is why traders treat the unannounced ones as scheduled catalysts waiting to fire.

This guide walks through what MTONGA actually is, what each of the four completed steps did, why the market has reacted the way it has, and what the three remaining steps might turn out to be. If you hold Gram, trade it, or are trying to understand why the token keeps spiking and fading, the roadmap is the framework that explains the pattern.

What MTONGA is, in one paragraph

Make TON Great Again is Durov’s name for the coordinated push, launched in April 2026, to upgrade The Open Network and bind it tightly to Telegram. The roadmap matters because it marks a reversal: Telegram built the network in 2018, abandoned it in 2020 after an SEC enforcement action, and left the independent TON Foundation to run it for years. MTONGA is Durov personally retaking the wheel, becoming the network’s largest validator, reclaiming the original Gram name, and announcing a sequence of technical and branding moves designed to make the chain fast enough and cheap enough to serve Telegram’s billion-user base. The name echoes a political slogan, but the goals are technical and strategic: speed, low fees, direct Telegram control, and a brand that Telegram’s users already recognize.

Step one: Catchain 2.0 and sub-second speed

MTONGA opened on April 9, 2026, with the upgrade that made the rest possible.

Durov announced that the network had become roughly ten times faster, with transactions confirming in under a second where they previously took around five seconds or more. The engine behind the change was Catchain 2.0, a new consensus mechanism that cut block production time from about 2.5 seconds to roughly 400 milliseconds and introduced a streaming layer that pushes updates to applications almost instantly instead of making them wait for the next block.

For users, the practical effect is that payments clear in about a second, trades execute in real time, and apps respond immediately, the responsiveness a consumer payment network needs if it is going to feel like sending a message rather than waiting on a blockchain.

There was a tradeoff worth understanding, because it touches the token’s economics.

More frequent blocks mean more validator rewards, which strengthens the incentive to stake but also raises issuance: the network’s annual inflation is expected to rise from roughly 0.6% toward 3.6% as a consequence of the faster block production. That is a meaningful increase, and it sits underneath the bull case as a quiet headwind, more tokens are created to reward the validators securing the faster chain. The speed is a genuine upgrade; the inflation bump is its cost.

Step two: the sixfold fee cut

With speed in place, the next move lowered the cost of using the network.

Base transaction fees were cut roughly sixfold, standardizing the cost at around $0.0005 per transfer regardless of network congestion. TON fees were already low compared with Ethereum or Solana, so the significance is less about the absolute saving and more about what cheap, predictable fees enable: micropayments and high-frequency applications that only make sense when each transaction costs a fraction of a cent.

A network aiming to host in-app payments, tipping, and consumer commerce for a billion people needs fees low enough that users never think about them, and the sixfold cut moves toward that, with Durov having referenced feeless transactions as a longer-term goal. The fee reduction is the economic complement to the speed upgrade: fast and nearly free is the combination a consumer payment layer requires.

Step three: Telegram becomes the largest validator

Step three was the most strategically consequential, because it changed who controls the network.

On May 4, 2026, Durov announced that Telegram would replace the Switzerland-based TON Foundation as the primary steward of The Open Network and operate as the chain’s largest validator, staking millions of tokens through the messenger’s own infrastructure.

This reversed years of deliberate separation between Telegram and the network, the separation that was built after the 2020 SEC settlement specifically to distance the company from the project. Telegram binding its corporate infrastructure and stake to the chain is the clearest signal yet that the company is committing its fate to the network, the thing the market had most wanted and most doubted since the independent foundation took over.

This move drew predictable centralization concerns, since a single dominant validator is a concentration of power, and Durov pushed back by arguing that Telegram serving as a large validator actually encourages other major players to join the validator pool as a counterbalance.

Whether that holds in practice is an open question, but the strategic point is unambiguous: after years at arm’s length, Telegram is now formally in control of the network’s direction, which is the foundation the rest of the roadmap and the entire Gram investment thesis rest on.

Step four: the Gram rename

Step four is the one most people heard about, and the one that changed the least, mechanically.

In early June, Durov announced that the native token would reclaim its original name, Gram, the name from Telegram’s 2018 whitepaper that was abandoned after the SEC forced the project to shut down in 2020.

A community vote on the TON Vote platform passed with 81.22% support, and the rename took effect on June 15, 2026, changing the token’s name and ticker from TON to GRAM while leaving the blockchain itself called The Open Network.

No token swap, migration, or claim was required: balances, addresses, staking, and contracts all carried over, and a holder of 10 Toncoin simply held 10 Gram. For most holders, the rename was a display and ticker change, not a technical event.

What made the rename matter was symbolic and strategic, not mechanical.

Reclaiming Gram reconnects the token to its origins and to the Telegram brand its users already recognize, closing a gap that always made “Toncoin” confusing to the messenger’s own audience. It also signals regulatory confidence, since reviving the name the SEC once litigated against is a statement that Telegram believes the climate has changed.

A pure rename changes no supply, no fees, and no on-chain mechanics, which is why the right way to read step four is as the branding capstone on the three technical and strategic moves that preceded it.

Inveniam Capital Partners has announced plans to acquire layer-1 blockchain Mantra and affiliated entities, signaling a deeper move into infrastructure tied to tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). The deal builds on Inveniam’s prior commitment to the network, after the firm made a $20 million strategic investment in Mantra in August 2025, according to the company’s Tuesday announcement.

The acquisition also follows Inveniam’s rollout of NVNM Chain, a Mantra-based layer-2 network launched on May 13. NVNM Chain is positioned to help verify assets while avoiding exposure of confidential information—an approach that aligns with the broader push to make RWA workflows more audit-friendly without compromising privacy.

Key takeaways

• Inveniam Capital Partners will acquire Mantra and affiliated entities, deepening its involvement in RWA-focused blockchain infrastructure.
• The transaction follows Inveniam’s $20 million strategic investment in Mantra in August 2025.
• Inveniam earlier launched NVNM Chain (May 13), a layer-2 designed for asset verification while preserving confidentiality.
• The deal reflects an effort to connect tokenized real-world asset rails with AI-ready, regulated private-market data.
• Mantra has recently faced severe market turbulence around its OM token, including a sharp drawdown in April 2025.

Why the Mantra acquisition matters to RWA infrastructure

Mantra’s pitch has centered on enabling RWAs to move with blockchain-based verification while addressing one of the biggest practical constraints in tokenization: how to prove claims about real-world assets without disclosing sensitive information. NVNM Chain, launched on May 13, is framed specifically around that tradeoff, supporting asset verification without revealing confidential data.

For Inveniam, acquiring the layer-1 and associated entities suggests it wants more direct control over the technical and operational foundations behind that privacy-preserving verification model. The company says this is part of an effort to accelerate delivery of “digital private markets” capabilities to broader market participants—particularly those operating in institutional and regulated contexts where compliance requirements tend to be strict.

Strategic investment precedes NVNM Chain rollout

Inveniam’s latest move did not arrive out of nowhere. In August 2025, the firm made a $20 million strategic investment in Mantra, and it later launched NVNM Chain on May 13. In its announcement, Inveniam’s leadership tied these steps together, describing the initial investment as a bet that regulated blockchain infrastructure and AI-ready private market data would need to be integrated.

According to chairman and CEO Patrick O’Meara, the acquisition is intended to expand Inveniam’s role in private-market ecosystems. “This acquisition positions us to be value-additive to the global private markets ecosystem faster,” O’Meara said. He added that the aim is to enable market operators, asset owners, and institutional private-market investors to access “digital private markets” alongside DeFi-oriented markets.

From an investor and developer standpoint, that linkage between private-market data readiness and blockchain rails is a key part of the narrative. It also highlights what Inveniam appears to be targeting: not just token issuance, but end-to-end infrastructure that can support verification workflows while remaining compatible with institutional expectations.

A turbulent stretch for Mantra and its OM token

While the acquisition represents a push deeper into infrastructure, Mantra’s recent history includes notable volatility. Earlier in the year, the company announced layoffs and restructuring after what CEO John Patrick Mullin described as the most challenging year in its history, following the collapse of the OM token and continued market pressure.

On April 13, 2025, the Mantra (OM) token suffered a steep decline. According to CoinMarketCap data, OM fell by about 90% within hours, wiping out more than $5 billion in market capitalization, the platform reported.

In a post on X, Mullin argued that the drop was driven by centralized exchange behavior rather than internal selling. He blamed “reckless forced closures initiated by centralized exchanges on OM account holders.” He also clarified that the dislocation was not caused by the team, the MANTRA Chain Association, core advisors, or investors selling tokens, adding that tokens “remain locked and subject to the published vesting periods.”

That backdrop matters for readers because it frames the risk environment surrounding Mantra—even if the company’s longer-term infrastructure goals are now moving forward under new ownership. It also suggests that any future progress will likely be judged not only by technical milestones like NVNM Chain, but by how stakeholders regain confidence after periods of disruption.

Cointelegraph asked Mantra for deal details

Cointelegraph reached out to Mantra for additional details about the acquisition, but had not received a response by publication. As a result, readers should watch for further clarification on the structure and timeline of the transaction, along with any changes to governance, development priorities, or how Inveniam plans to integrate NVNM Chain and the underlying Mantra infrastructure.

More broadly, the move reflects a continuing trend in crypto infrastructure: firms looking beyond trading networks toward the data and verification layers needed for RWAs, and increasingly tying those efforts to privacy and AI-readiness. With Inveniam now seeking full ownership of the ecosystem it previously funded, the next signals to monitor will be whether technical verification advances translate into sustained adoption and whether market confidence stabilizes after earlier volatility.

Many experts share Bilotta’s AI agent outlook, including Charles Hoskinson, founder and CEO of Cardano’s Input Output, who said that by 2035 they will become more relevant than humans.

The macro numbers support his stance. Data from the U.S. International Trade Administration via Trade.gov shows that business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce across the broader Asia-Pacific region is expanding at a 15% annual clip, with market values projected to climb past $28.9 trillion by the end of this year.

Yet, despite that explosive growth, the plumbing underneath remains broken. The problem is fundamentally an issue of legacy infrastructure and compliance, Bilotta noted.

Global financial regulations, banking protocols and identity verification checks were built strictly for humans. An autonomous AI software agent cannot pass a standard compliance check, he said or execute a payment loop unless a human manually intervenes to clear the transaction.

To bridge this structural gap, the industry requires a compliant backend middleware that acts as a universal interpreter. Bilotta explained that by dropping an Anthropic-standard Model Context Protocol (MCP) server directly into the payment infrastructure, software agents can programmatically navigate compliance, pull real-time FX quotes, and settle transactions natively across borders without human steps.

While institutional gatekeepers like Stripe and Mastercard have spent billions acquiring fiat-to-crypto APIs to secure traditional corporate treasuries, the automated machine-to-machine economy across emerging corridors remains heavily underserved.

Bitcoin BTC$64,937.87 is facing selling pressure ahead of today’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest-rate decision at the first meeting under new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.

The largest cryptocurrency pulled back below $65,000 after trading near $67,000 just a day earlier, CoinDesk data show. The broader market CoinDesk 20 Index (CD200) has lost 1.2% since midnight UTC, with all but four tokens declining.

“The main focus for the week is the FOMC meeting under new leadership, with market expectations of interest rate hikes already priced in through 2027,” Laser Digital said in its weekly note.

The market is pricing in no change in the fed funds rate at this meeting. Instead, the focus will be on Warsh’s post-meeting press conference for signals on his views on inflation. Warsh has criticized the Fed’s frequent press conferences and detailed forecasting and may face questions on his stance.

Among stand-out gainers, Uniswap’s UNI token surged another 20% over 24 hours, buoyed by Standard Chartered’s bullish forecast of $100 by 2030. Meanwhile, NEAR, INJ and several stablecoin-related assets dropped as much as 8%.

Derivatives positioning

• The market remains calm ahead of the Fed decision. Activity has slowed, with crypto futures volume falling 20% in 24 hours to $165 billion and open interest dropping 2.3% to $110 billion. Liquidations fell to roughly $310 million, down 44%.
• The calm is also evident in BVIV, bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, which was hovering near an annualized 39% at the time of writing — a level not seen since June 2, just before it spiked to nearly 59% a few days later. Ether’s volatility index is showing similar stability.
• Cardano’s ADA stands out among altcoins. Open interest has climbed to 2.26 billion tokens, nearing the record 2.32 billion set on June 6 and recovering from the June 13 low of 2 billion.
• The rebound points to renewed capital deployment in leveraged ADA markets, though the move isn’t necessarily bullish. The token’s price has slipped from over 18 cents to under 17 cents in two days alongside a negative 24-hour cumulative volume delta. The combination leans bearish, pointing to aggressive trading at market orders rather than passive limit orders.
• ZEC and SUI are the other notable open interest gainers over the past 24 hours, while NEAR and BCH led the losers.
• NEAR has dropped over 9%, and the decline in open interest suggests traders are unwinding leverage during the selloff rather than piling into fresh shorts.
• Most major tokens, with the exception of TRX and CC, are showing negative 24-hour CVD, pointing to broad bearish dominance in trade flows.
• In options markets, BTC puts continue to dominate 24-hour volume rankings, though the $80,000 call expiring March 26 next year also saw notable activity. In ether’s case, calls are leading volume rankings.

Token talk

• UNI has risen for a seventh straight day, its longest winning streak since August 2023, when it ran eight. The token trades near $2.75, erasing its June losses after jumping by more than 10% earlier in the week.
• The accelerant was a Standard Chartered note. The bank’s digital assets head, Geoff Kendrick, initiated coverage on June 15 with a $100 price target for 2030, roughly 40 times the current level, arguing that tokenized real-world assets, meaning stocks and bonds issued onchain, will flood into DeFi and Uniswap will capture the flow as core market infrastructure. He predicts a path through $6.50 by year-end.
• Two fundamentals sit underneath the call. Uniswap’s fee switch, live since late 2025, routes a share of trading fees into buying back and burning UNI, and has removed about 106 million tokens, more than 10% of supply, turning a pure governance token into a deflationary one.
• Separately, tokenized stocks that launched on the protocol earlier this month have already seen more than $9.1 billion swapped through its real-world-asset pools.

The entire bitcoin market is worth about $1.2 trillion as of Wednesday. SpaceX, at $2.5 trillion, is worth nearly twice that, and it is drawing from the same risk budget that flows to crypto – the point ARK made earlier this week when it funded its SpaceX buying by selling other holdings.

The caution is that expectations now leave little room for error, with some analysts warning that a SpaceX stumble would hit the broader market and the AI winners with it.

“With the expectations already sky high, there is little room for error,” Lukman Otunuga, head of markets at FXTM, told CoinDesk in an email. “Should SpaceX disappoint down the line, the fallout will hit the broader stock market, as well as the beneficiaries of the AI boom.”

The numbers support that worry. SpaceX posted a $4.94 billion net loss in 2025 on $18.67 billion of revenue, and at $2.5 trillion, it trades at more than 130 times sales, a multiple some call meme-stock territory.

As such, SpaceX announced Tuesday that it has formally agreed to take over Cursor in a deal that values the AI coding startup at $60 billion. Cursor investors will have the right to receive SpaceX stock based on the implied equity value of Cursor, according to a company filing.

Key Takeaways

• Over 100 Chinese technology companies, including DeepSeek and CXMT, have avoided U.S. trade restrictions despite receiving security clearance for blacklisting.
• An interagency committee greenlit these companies for Entity List designation, but the Commerce Department hasn’t published the updates.
• The Entity List has seen no new additions since October—marking an unprecedented pause spanning more than ten years of enforcement history.
• Security officials identified DeepSeek as aiding Chinese military objectives and attempting to illegally obtain advanced American semiconductors.
• National security analysts caution that this administrative freeze could enable critical U.S. technology to fall into hostile hands.

The current administration has postponed the blacklisting of more than 100 Chinese corporations through the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List, Reuters has revealed. Among the companies awaiting designation are artificial intelligence developer DeepSeek and semiconductor manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies, both of which received interagency approval for restrictions but remain unlisted.

Inclusion on the Entity List triggers severe export limitations. American companies are prohibited from transferring products, software applications, or proprietary technology to designated entities without obtaining special government authorization, which authorities routinely reject.

This postponement appears connected to diplomatic strategies aimed at preventing escalation with China. Reports indicate that Jeffrey Kessler, the under secretary of commerce overseeing industry and security matters, has worked to suspend Chinese entity designations since the closing months of 2025.

DeepSeek captured international attention in January 2025 after launching an affordable AI system that sent shockwaves through the tech industry. According to a high-ranking State Department representative, the company has provided assistance to Chinese military and intelligence agencies while orchestrating efforts to procure cutting-edge American processors through intermediary corporations in Southeast Asia.

Anthropic disclosed earlier this year that it uncovered coordinated efforts by DeepSeek alongside two additional Chinese AI developers attempting to extract proprietary capabilities from its Claude AI system. OpenAI similarly alerted congressional members that DeepSeek was conducting operations against its technology platforms.

ChangXin Memory Technologies, representing China’s leading memory chip producer, received designation as a Chinese military-linked corporation by Pentagon officials during the previous Biden administration.

Record-Breaking Pause in Enforcement Actions

No fresh Entity List designations have appeared since October. According to Philip Luck from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this represents an unprecedented enforcement gap exceeding anything witnessed in the past decade.

“The Entity List functions like whack-a-mole and you need to maintain constant vigilance,” Luck explained.

Kevin Kurland, previously with the Commerce Department, characterized the suspension as evidence that commercial considerations are eclipsing national security imperatives. “The absence of any Entity List additions since October clearly demonstrates that trade policy considerations are taking precedence over a vital national security instrument,” he stated.

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No fewer than 75 Chinese organizations operating in semiconductor manufacturing, chip production equipment, and artificial intelligence development received approval for listing but await official publication.

Additional flagged entities include suppliers of components discovered in Russian unmanned aerial vehicles recovered in Poland last September, plus companies accused of distributing restricted Nvidia processors to Chinese educational institutions.

Commerce Bureau Remains Tight-Lipped on Publication Delays

The Bureau of Industry and Security has not provided substantive responses regarding the publication freeze, declining to address questions about DeepSeek and CXMT specifically.

The agency stated it employs “numerous policy and enforcement mechanisms, including the Entity List, throughout regular operations.”

Additionally, the bureau has failed to issue a successor regulation to the AI chip export controls established under President Biden, creating a potential regulatory void that may have permitted advanced processors to reach Chinese entities operating beyond China’s borders.