RIADeFi
Refusal file · staking

Why Ketju rejected Tonstakers (tsTON)

Memo v1Published by Ketju Research

A registry memo, published verbatim and versioned. Superseded versions are recorded, never edited away. A rejection is a judgment for Ketju's client base and thesis, not a universal safety claim. Not investment, legal, tax, or compliance advice.

The memo

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.

What would reopen the file

  • 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

Facts on file

Verdict
Rejected
Exposure
staking
Chains examined
TON
Instruments
TSTON
Memo version
v1
Reviewed
Next review

← All published refusals