Telegram Adds 714,844 Self-Custodial Wallets in 48 Hours

Telegram recorded 714,844 new self-custodial wallets in 48 hours, a figure the company attributes to expanded access to its in-app wallet running on The Open Network. The number measures registrations, not usage, and the gap between the two is wide.

Telegram announced the wallet integration in July and began a limited rollout on August 31. It broadened access in October. The platform reports more than one billion monthly users, which makes the 48-hour registration figure equal to roughly seven one-hundredths of one percent of that base.

The wallet operates on The Open Network, a blockchain closely tied to Telegram's ecosystem. In June, the network renamed its native token Toncoin to Gram after 81.22% of votes backed the change. Existing balances, addresses, and staking positions carried over without migration. Takeaway: the rebrand was cosmetic, not structural.

What separates registrations from active wallets?

The Gram blockchain explorer counts Telegram registrations separately from active addresses, and it requires an on-chain transaction before a wallet counts as active. That distinction matters here. A registration costs nothing; a transaction commits funds to the network.

Market researcher Ismail Rustamov, in a November 6 analysis, put active TON wallets at about 282,000 over 24 hours. He estimated the monthly active count at 2.2 million. Even measured monthly, active wallets stand at roughly three times the 48-hour registration burst — a ratio that suggests most registered wallets have not transacted.

Rustamov placed daily network throughput at about 5 million transactions. That is the working load of the chain, and it has absorbed the October expansion without reported congestion. Takeaway: registrations are a marketing metric; transactions are the operational one.

How deep is TON's DeFi liquidity?

Rustamov put total value locked in TON's decentralized finance applications at about $42.9 million. The same figure stood at $92 million in May. That is a decline of more than half in six months, or a drop of roughly $8.2 million per month on average.

He estimated daily trading volume on TON decentralized exchanges at $2.7 million. For context, that level of turnover equals what major chains on other networks process in minutes, not days. The numbers describe a thin market relative to the scale of Telegram's user base.

The divergence is the story. Telegram can push wallet registrations to its users at negligible cost through in-app prompts, but liquidity and transaction demand depend on applications users actually open. Total value locked falling while registrations rise indicates acquisition is running ahead of product engagement. Takeaway: distribution came first; usage has not followed at the same pace.

What comes next?

The registration count will keep climbing as long as Telegram continues the rollout, but the metric to watch is the ratio of active wallets to registrations. If the November figures hold, TON's DeFi sector would end the year at roughly half its May liquidity, absent a change in application demand.