GR$
Gram Prefix Word
GR$ - Gram (prev. TON) Prefix Word created and described by Nikolai Durov in 2020.
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In plain words
Three things, simply put
No jargon. Here is the whole story in three cards — then scroll down and check every word against the original source yourself.
Gram was TON's coin
Gram was the name of the coin originally planned for the TON network. It was never publicly issued; the network's live coin today is Toncoin (TON).[8]
GR$ writes Gram
In TON's code you write a Gram amount by putting GR$ before the number — like GR$500. The developers' own comments translate that as “500 grams”.[3]
A code convention
GR$ is a developer/code notation from TON's source — rare and real. It is not an official Unicode currency symbol like ₿. We say exactly what it is.
The proof · in the creator's own words
TON's creator wrote it down
This is the heart of it. Not a comment buried in code — plain English, in the official “Fift” guide written by Nikolai Durov, TON's creator. To write amounts of Gram, he introduces one prefix word: GR$.
2390000000 or 1416666667.
If one needs to use such Gram literals often, one can introduce a new active prefix word GR$ as follows:
{ bl word (number) ?dup 0= abort
"not a valid Gram amount"
Fift: A Brief Introduction — N. Durov · official TON documentation
“…a new active prefix word GR$…”
Read literally, by the person who built TON: GR$ is the word you use to write Gram. That is the whole claim — and you can open the document and see it for yourself.
Open Durov's PDF ↗And it's all over the code
The same word, throughout TON's source
What Durov described in writing is exactly how the network is actually built. Each card links to the exact line on GitHub, pinned to a fixed commit so it never drifts.
“GR$500 // balance: 500 grams”
In the script that builds the main network's starting state, the elector contract's balance is written with GR$ — and the comment on the very same line says “500 grams”.[4]
“reserve all but 20 Grams”
Here the developers write GR$20 and, in the same line's comment, call it “20 Grams”. A few lines down, GR$1000 is “1k test Grams”.[5]
GR$ is defined right under “Gram utilities”
In the core Fift library, one Gram is set to a billion nanograms, and the word GR$ is defined to read a Gram amount — failing with “not a valid Gram amount”.[1]
“GR$.17 is equivalent to 170000000”
A second file defines GR$ again, with a comment showing the math: GR$.17 equals 170,000,000 nanograms.[6]
“Requesting GR$6.666”
In TON's own lite-client walkthrough, asking the test giver for coins is logged as a request for GR$6.666 — GR$ used to denote the amount being sent.[7]
Appendix A — “The TON Coin, or the Gram”
The original TON whitepaper dedicates an appendix to the coin and calls it the Gram — currency id 0, the base currency of the network.[9]
Sources & footnotes
Check everything
All links point to official, public, open-source material. GitHub links are pinned to commit 8e6f091 so the line numbers stay correct forever.