Tonstakers (tsTON)

Rejected venues wait the longest for re-review; a rejection has to earn another look before the scheduled date.

REJECTED ON EXPLICIT ACCESS EXCLUSION AND A MATERIAL CHANGE TO THE UNDERLYING ASSET. Tonstakers’ own Terms of Service state plainly that ”individuals residing in, citizens of, or entities registered in the United States are explicitly prohibited from using this Interface,” governed by England and Wales law with binding LCIA arbitration, and add that the operator ”and the Interface are not under the active supervision of any government agency or financial regulatory authority” — a direct disqualification for this registry’s US client base, stated by the product itself. Independent of that access bar, TON’s native token was renamed back to ”Gram,” effective 2026-06-15, following a community vote — reviving the exact name of Telegram’s 2018 token sale that the SEC sued over as an unregistered securities offering and that Telegram settled in 2020 for $18.5M plus $1.2B returned to investors, a settlement that led the community to rename the coin ”Toncoin” in the first place specifically to distance it from that history. Tonstakers’ own product has already adopted the new name. No named legal entity operates Tonstakers in any public document, and tracked TVL is down roughly 49% from its January 2025 peak.

Kill criteria: the events that revoke this verdict
• This registry never approves an entity that explicitly prohibits this registry’s US client base from using it, regardless of any other finding — this is a standing bar, not a reopen condition
• A named legal entity, jurisdiction, and current audit are disclosed if the US-exclusion bar is ever lifted
• The regulatory implications of the Gram rename for TON-denominated products are independently assessed by counsel
• TVL and validator-network share stabilize following the documented drawdown

The research file

The Gram rename and its regulatory history

TON’s native token reverted to the name ”Gram” on 2026-06-15 following a community vote, described by Telegram founder Pavel Durov as ”returning to our roots.” ”Gram” is not a generic label: it is the exact name of the token from Telegram’s 2018, roughly $1.7B ”Telegram Open Network” private sale, which the SEC sued over in October 2019 as an unregistered securities offering. Telegram settled in March 2020 — returning $1.2B to investors, paying an $18.5M civil penalty, and agreeing to notify the SEC before any future token issuance — after which Telegram abandoned the project and independent developers relaunched it as community-run ”The Open Network,” deliberately renaming the coin ”Toncoin” to distance it from the SEC-tainted Gram name. The June 2026 rename reverses that distancing. Tonstakers’ own site and product terminology have already adopted ”Gram” throughout.

The explicit US exclusion and unregulated posture

Tonstakers’ Terms of Service state directly: ”individuals residing in, citizens of, or entities registered in the United States are explicitly prohibited from using this Interface,” with users required to affirmatively represent they are not a US person. Governing law is England and Wales, with disputes resolved through binding, confidential LCIA arbitration and class actions waived. The Terms separately state: ”Tonstakers.com and the Interface are not under the active supervision of any government agency or financial regulatory authority.” No named legal entity — company name, incorporation jurisdiction, or registration number — appears anywhere on the site; the Terms define the operator only as ”the online project which operates the Website.”

Mechanism and control

Users deposit TON (now Gram) and receive tsTON, a share of a pooled, auto-compounding stake distributed across validators Tonstakers itself selects and operates as a Validator-as-a-Service business, claiming roughly 8% of TON’s total validated network stake. Institutional integrations include Tonkeeper, Crypto.com, and Telegram’s in-app wallet. A CertiK audit (delivered November 2023) flagged one Major centralization finding, later marked mitigated, but the specific admin-key, upgrade-authority, or freeze mechanism was not itemized in public summaries, and no multisig signer list or timelock parameters are disclosed. That single audit is now nearly three years old against a codebase and TVL base that have grown substantially since.

Redemption and track record

Redemption is comparatively fast for the category: an instant path fulfilled from idle pool liquidity when available, or a default path completing at the end of the current validation cycle, roughly 18-27 hours, backed by a service NFT receipt that must not be transferred or the withdrawal is interrupted — a real operational footgun. Tracked TVL peaked near $332M in January 2025 and sits around $170M at this review, a decline of roughly 49% from peak, coinciding with a broader TON ecosystem slowdown and now the Gram rename. Tonstakers holds roughly 75-80% of all TON liquid-staking TVL, the clear category leader but also the largest single concentration point in TON liquid staking.

Comparison and decision

Against other TON liquid staking options such as bemo or Whales, Tonstakers dominates by TVL and institutional integration, but none of that changes the two disqualifying facts here: the product itself bars US persons, and the underlying asset just took on the exact name tied to an SEC enforcement action and settlement. Against self-staking TON directly, a client avoids Tonstakers’ contract and validator-curation risk entirely but takes on the same base-asset regulatory-history question, which is a fact about the chain, not about Tonstakers’ own conduct.

Sources

The claims above trace to these. Where a number could not be independently verified, the thesis says so.

• Tonstakers — terms of service · primary · accessed 2026-08-19
  Supports: explicit US-person prohibition, England and Wales governing law, no regulatory supervision disclaimer, no named legal entity
• Tonstakers — validators and staking overview · primary · accessed 2026-08-19
  Supports: validator-as-a-service model, network stake share, institutional integrations
• CertiK Skynet — Tonstakers project audit and score · secondary · accessed 2026-08-19
  Supports: November 2023 audit, centralization finding, single audit on record
• DefiLlama — Tonstakers LSD protocol data · secondary · accessed 2026-08-19
  Supports: TVL history, January 2025 peak and current drawdown
• CoinGecko — Gram (previously Toncoin) · secondary · accessed 2026-08-19
  Supports: June 2026 token rename confirmation

Inherited controls

The verdict above grades the protocol layer. Every position also inherits the asset it holds and the chain it settles on. The least safe layer sets the position’s grade, and the position table names which one that is.