How TON Proof-of-Stake Works, and Where Liquid Staking Fits

Updated 18 October 2026. Toncoin was renamed Gram in June 2026; the network is still TON. Figures below were read from the chain on 17 October 2026 (UTC).

Many people first met TON through the mining giver contracts of its early days, but TON was never a proof-of-work chain. Blocks are produced by validators who lock Gram as collateral, and the protocol pays them for it. Understanding how that works explains both what staking earns and why liquid staking exists.

Validators and the Elector contract

Everything starts at the Elector, a system smart contract on the masterchain. Before each round it runs an election: would-be validators send stakes to it, and it picks the set that will sign blocks next.

On 17 October 2026 that set had 383 validators holding about 677 million Gram between them. The protocol accepts stakes from 300,000 Gram, but competition sets the real bar: the smallest stake that won a seat was about 818,000 Gram, and the network allows up to 400 validators.

One round, four phases

Each round (a validation cycle) lasts 65,536 seconds, about 18.2 hours. Around it:

1. Election. Opens about 9.1 hours before the round and closes about 2.3 hours before it starts. Stakes must be sent with the Elector's own message format; a plain transfer is not a bid.
2. Validation. The elected set signs blocks for the full 18.2 hours. Validators that miss too many blocks can be reported and fined.
3. Hold. After the round, stakes stay frozen for another 32,768 seconds (about 9.1 hours) so complaints can still be filed.
4. Payout. Stake plus bonuses go back to the validator.

Because a stake is busy for its round and the hold that follows, the same Gram can only join every other election. A validator that wants to sign in every round therefore needs two stakes rotating, and a single staked Gram earns roughly 240 times a year (once every 36.4 hours).

Two validator cohorts overlap so the network always has an active set.

What it pays

Validator income is the bonus the Elector distributes at the end of each round, funded by new issuance and transaction fees. For the last round completed before this update, bonuses came to about 0.065% of the total stake. Compounded over ~240 rounds that is roughly 16.9% a year, gross, before any pool or protocol fee.

That number moves. It depends on total stake (more Gram staked means each Gram earns less), network parameters and fees. Treat any single round as a snapshot; the live data page shows the current figure and how it is computed.

Why most holders can't validate

• Capital. About 818,000 Gram to win a seat today, twice that to sign in every round.
• Infrastructure. A dedicated, well-connected server; the TON docs list the requirements.
• Operations. 24/7 uptime and monitoring. Downtime gets fined, and a public node attracts attacks.

So for nearly everyone the question isn't whether to delegate, but how.

Nominator pools and liquid staking

TON's original design anticipated nominators: contracts that pool many holders' Gram and stake it with validators. Classic nominator pools still exist; your Gram is locked for each round and you manage entering and leaving yourself.

Liquid staking goes a step further. A protocol pools deposits, puts them to work with validators and gives you a transferable token for your share. With a rate-appreciating token such as KTON, your token balance stays fixed while the amount of Gram each token redeems for rises every round.

How KTON does it

KTON is the liquid staking protocol built by the team behind the original TonStake pools. Its V2 launched in 2025 as the first publicly audited TonCore LST V2 (TonBit audit).

• Yield source. The pool lends Gram to validator operators for each round and is repaid with interest when the round settles. There is no trading and no lending of your Gram into DeFi.
• Fee. A 16% governance fee on rewards, never on principal. The APY shown in the app is net of it. Over the 30 days to this update, KTON's exchange rate grew at about 13.4% a year, net.
• Minimum. 1 Gram, plus about 1.15 Gram of gas that is mostly refunded.
• Exit. Unstaking returns your Gram when the current round settles, up to about 36 hours. KTON keeps almost all deposits staked rather than holding an idle buffer, so its instant path is small: the app can pay from the little Gram the pool keeps aside, for a 0.2% fee, and anything larger waits for the round.

That last point is the real trade-off between liquid staking protocols. Some keep part of their Gram unstaked so they can pay instant withdrawals; KTON stakes nearly everything for yield. Neither is wrong; pick the one that matches how quickly you might need your Gram. Our comparison lays the options side by side.

The takeaway

TON's proof-of-stake runs in 18.2-hour rounds with stakes frozen across each round and its hold period, paying validators around 17% a year gross at current stake levels. Validating directly takes close to a million Gram and real operations. Liquid staking lets any holder take part from 1 Gram, at the cost of a protocol fee and, depending on the protocol, waiting out a round to exit.

If you want to try it, the step-by-step guide walks through staking with KTON from any TON wallet or inside Telegram.