Spammers Spent 25 Times More on Gram Wallet Spam Runs Than Telegram Did on Free Transfers

From September 9 to October 23, Gram Wallet accounts received 39,495 advertising transfers from 143 addresses, costing senders 3,707 Gram. During the same weeks, Telegram paid network fees for users for 113,236 transfers, spending about 150 Gram on this, which is 25 times less. The advertisements reached 25,866 wallets. Each such message arrives as a 0.1 Gram transfer, and the recipient keeps these funds.

What to Do with an Ad Transfer

The advertisement appears in the wallet's service chat as a card saying «Someone sent you 0.1 Grams» from an unknown sender, with the text as a transfer comment below it.

An advertising transfer does not deduct anything from your balance: 0.1 Gram is credited to your account, and you can keep or spend it.

It's best not to open links from comments. Some spam runs impersonate Telegram: "Wallet activated! A bonus from Telegram is available to you", «Thank you for activating your wallet. Claim bonus from Telegram team», «Your wallet has been activated. Claim Airdrop». In the first two, Cyrillic letters are mixed with Latin ones. They lead to tg-bonus.com, gram.casa, and rewards-gram.info, websites unrelated to Telegram.

How Much Telegram Spends

Gram Wallet sends five transfers per day at Telegram's expense. A signed transfer goes to the network via gas wallets, or relayers, and they pay the fee. All 32 relayers were topped up by one address: on September 9 and 21, it transferred exactly 32,096 Gram to them and paid no one else. By October 24, 31,945.5 Gram remained in the relayers' reserve, meaning 150.5 Gram was spent on free transfers, less than half a percent of the reserve.

Almost all 113,236 transfers occurred after October 9, when the wallet began its rollout to everyone. One free transfer costs Telegram about 0.0013 Gram.

Some of these funds also reached spammers. Eight of the 143 spammers use the Telegram wallet themselves, and 68 advertising transfers from six such wallets were sent as free transfers: the gas for them, approximately 0.09 Gram, was paid by the relayers. The remaining advertising transfers came from regular wallets, and Telegram did not pay the gas for them.

How Much Spammers Spent

The first mass mailing began on the day of the rollout. On October 9 at 16:33 UTC, transfers advertising @pgon started, and over two days, 20,381 of them were sent from 82 addresses, the main one being this address. That same evening, another address sent 3,565 transfers advertising @laveshka in 35 minutes. On October 9 alone, 19,080 advertising transfers totaling 1,905.5 Gram were sent, while Telegram paid for 31,426 free transfers.

Senders paid an additional 8.5 Gram in fees for their own transactions, which accounts for the 3,707 Gram total. The second major wave occurred on October 22 and 23. From one address, 5,500 transfers advertising trading signals were sent in 20 hours, and Dragon Money sent 2,673 on October 22.

One wallet was hit the hardest, receiving 14 advertising transfers, with an average of 1.5 per recipient.

Why Advertising Costs Money

On the TON network, a comment travels only with a transfer: there are no messages without funds in a wallet's transaction history. Therefore, an advertising text costs the transfer amount plus the forwarding fee. Over 36,000 advertising transfers were made for exactly 0.1 Gram, and this amount was not chosen by chance. Telegram does not send messages to the wallet chat for transfers less than 0.1 Gram: such a transfer is only visible in the transaction history.

It can be cheaper if a notification is not needed. Mailing services @GramFloodingBot, @TonFloodingBot, and @GramMailing_bot advertise themselves with transfers of 0.000000001 Gram, «advertise to 100K+ active wallets». 1,410 such messages cost them approximately 0.14 Gram, or 0.0001 Gram per piece, 13 times cheaper than what Telegram pays for one free transfer.

New wallets and hourly free transfers are available on the Gram Wallet dashboard.