In a significant move for cryptocurrency enthusiasts and miners alike, MEXC Exchange has announced the listing of GRAM, the first mining token on the TON (The Open Network) blockchain that can be mined using graphics cards. Despite being launched only at the end of January, GRAM has seen a remarkable surge in popularity, with its holder count exceeding 30,000 and its value increasing tenfold from $0.0027 to $0.03, peaking at $0.044.
MEXC Exchange will introduce a trading GRAM/USDT pair, expanding the accessibility and liquidity of GRAM. Prior to this listing, GRAM support was already established in several decentralized exchanges within the TON ecosystem, including major AMM DEX STON.fi, Ton.Diamonds, and DEX DeDust, as well as in the P2P section of CryptoBot in Telegram.
GRAM stands out for its high level of decentralization and the ability to mine the token using the computational power of standard graphics cards. This decentralization is ensured by the absence of pre-mining or reserves for the project team or major investors. All coins are held within smart contracts named PoW Givers, through which mining occurs.
The mining process for GRAM is reminiscent of how TON was mined during the initial phase of TON blockchain’s launch. Users set up software and receive rewards as miners for correctly solving computational tasks contained in PoW Givers. This approach ensures an even distribution of coins among users, maintaining the network’s high decentralization.
GRAM has become the most popular token on the TON blockchain. Large PoW Givers with rewards of 100,000 GRAM were depleted within a day after GRAM’s launch on January 30th. By March, coins from medium and small PoW Givers with rewards of 10,000 and 1,000 respectively were also completely mined. Currently, mining continues through micro-givers with rewards of 100 GRAM.
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The total issuance of GRAM is capped at 5 000 000 000, with 1,750,000,000 GRAM already mined as of March 27th. GRAM aims to be the Bitcoin equivalent in the TON ecosystem, facilitating instant and low-cost transactions of any volume. It was launched by a team of enthusiast developers when the previous team had to give up the project.
“I could never have imagined that Gram, which I launched as an experiment, would create such a stir and capture the attention of the entire TON community, becoming the most decentralized coin on the TON blockchain with equal distribution,” Oleg Oskolskiy, GRAM’s lead developer stated after the token’s launch. “Gram has a founder but no owner, no tokenomics or roadmap, and it’s up to each member of the community to decide what Gram means to them. We are all equal stakeholders and observers.”
The name GRAM echoes that of the main cryptocurrency in Pavel Durov’s Telegram Open Network project, which raised $1.7 billion in private funding rounds in 2018 but was later frozen due to regulatory pressure before being handed over to the community and renamed The Open Network (TON). Although Telegram’s official team does not manage the TON project, it actively supports initiatives to develop the ecosystem. In February 2024, Pavel Durov announced the start of rewarding Telegram channel owners for ad views in TONcoin.
GRAM positions itself as an impressive alternative for investors and blockchain enthusiasts looking for cryptocurrencies that offer the same principles of decentralization and security as Bitcoin (BTC), but with enhanced features, particularly in terms of transaction speed and scalability.
With the buzz of potential listings spreading through the project’s dedicated Telegram channel, enthusiasts of GRAM are keenly awaiting its introduction on other top exchanges shortly. Significant activity has been noted, with transfers involving more than a million GRAM tokens being dispatched to accounts on both MEXC and OKX.
