Telegram has switched on its native Gram wallet for a limited group of accounts, with a staged expansion to more than 1 billion users planned within weeks.
Key Points:
- Telegram opened its non-custodial Gram wallet to a select group of accounts on Monday, with wider access due over the next couple of weeks.
- Validators approved the smart contract behind the wallet, so future upgrades will not force anyone into a new contract.
- The older custodial service, Wallet in Telegram, is rebranding as Walt and losing its default position in the app.
Gram Wallet Rollout Begins
Founder Pavel Durov announced the limited release on Monday, saying the product is ready and that access will widen to the messenger's billion-plus user base over the next couple of weeks. He credited network validators with approving the smart contract that runs the wallet, which he presented as the reason later upgrades will land cleanly.
That approval matters because it lets the company ship those upgrades without asking anyone to move funds into a fresh contract, a step Durov framed as one of several fixes aimed at making self-custody workable for ordinary users. Access will open in stages rather than through a single switch. Telegram has also made the new wallet the default choice in user settings, displacing an arrangement that has stood inside the app for years.
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Walt Rebrand Splits Telegram Crypto
The older custodial service, Wallet in Telegram, rebrands as Walt and moves behind the search function. Gram wallet will handle payments, transfers and purchases of Telegram collectibles including gifts, usernames and phone numbers, while Walt covers trading, investing and holdings spread across several chains.
Andrew Rogozov, founder and chief executive of The Open Platform, said the service began as a simple way to buy the network's token and grew over four years into a full crypto platform inside the messenger. Walt now supports more than 300 assets across four blockchains and offers trading in over 200 of them, alongside tokenized stocks and metals.
The two wallets stay linked, with Walt feeding multichain deposits into the Gram side.
Scale is the part analysts have argued over since July. No self-custody wallet has ever launched with a billion-user distribution channel attached, and the open question is how many recipients switch the feature on rather than simply receive it.
Gram's Path Back To Telegram
Durov first pledged the native wallet in July, calling it the largest rollout of a non-custodial crypto wallet in human history. The launch closes a loop that opened eight years ago.
Telegram raised $1.7 billion in 2018 for a token it planned to call Gram, then walked away from the project after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued over the sale.
The company settled in 2020, returned $1.2 billion to investors and paid a civil penalty of $18.5 million. Independent developers kept the chain running as Toncoin until Durov took the reins this year, became the network's largest validator in the spring and cut transaction fees, before a community vote in June restored the Gram name.
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