Frequently asked questions

Hipo is a liquid staking protocol on TON. You stake GRAM and receive hGRAM in return — a token that represents your staked GRAM and stays usable while the GRAM keeps earning staking rewards: you can hold it, send it or use it in TON DeFi.

Hipo runs on open-source smart contracts and there is no account to create: you connect a TON wallet on the Stake page and the contracts do the rest.

With ordinary staking, your coins are locked in the network while they earn rewards, so you cannot use them in the meantime.

Liquid staking hands you a token in exchange for the locked stake — a liquid staking token, or LST — that represents it and can be held, sent or used while the stake keeps earning. Hipo’s LST is hGRAM. Rewards do not arrive as separate payments; they land in the LST’s exchange rate, so over time each hGRAM becomes redeemable for more GRAM than you staked.

GRAM staking means putting your GRAM behind TON validators — the network participants that produce blocks, keep TON running securely and earn staking rewards for doing so.

Running a validator takes hardware and a validator-sized stake. Through Hipo you need neither: your GRAM is pooled with other stakers’ and lent to validators, and you share in the rewards. See how Hipo works.

In four steps:

1. You deposit GRAM and receive hGRAM — a receipt for your share of the pool.
2. Hipo pools everyone’s GRAM in its treasury smart contract.
3. Validators borrow the pooled GRAM for a validation round — TON’s staking cycle: a round lasts roughly 18 hours, and stakes stay frozen for about 9 more hours afterwards, until any complaints are resolved and the GRAM can be recovered.
4. When a round’s rewards come back, they go into the treasury and raise the hGRAM exchange rate, so the same hGRAM is worth more GRAM.

None of this needs action from you. The full flow is in the docs: How does Hipo work?

Because you earn staking rewards on your GRAM without locking it away: you hold hGRAM, which you can use, send or swap while the GRAM works for you.

There is no minimum and no lock-up. Instead of a hand-picked validator, Hipo runs a permissionless validator marketplace where validators compete for the stake, and its smart contracts are open source and audited. When you are ready, head to the Stake page.

Yes. Your stake is held by Hipo’s on-chain smart contracts, and the hGRAM that represents it sits in your own wallet. Nobody — Hipo’s team included — can move your funds, and you can start an unstake at any time — Full settles after the current validation round, Instant right away while Hipo’s free liquidity covers it.

Hipo connects through TON Connect, so any TON wallet that supports it will work. The connect dialog lists the wallets available to you.

You can also stake from the Hipo Telegram Mini App. Multisig wallets cannot sign dapp transactions, so for those the app hands the order to your wallet app instead, which creates it as a multisig request — see Can I stake with a multisig or cold wallet?

Open the Stake page, connect a TON wallet, enter how much GRAM you want to stake and confirm the transaction in your wallet. hGRAM arrives in the same wallet, usually within moments.

You can stake more at any time, straight from your wallet: every additional deposit gives you more hGRAM at the current exchange rate.

There is no minimum. You can stake any amount of GRAM, even a fraction of one.

You only need enough to cover the amount you are staking plus a small gas prepayment (currently 0.1 GRAM) that the app attaches on top. Only a fraction of it — on the order of a hundredth of a GRAM — is actually spent; the rest is refunded to your wallet.

Hipo takes no cut of the GRAM you stake: you receive hGRAM for the full amount.

What you do pay is TON network gas. The app attaches a small gas prepayment (currently 0.1 GRAM) on top of your deposit rather than deducting it. Gas fees are set by the TON network and move with it; only a fraction of the prepayment — on the order of a hundredth of a GRAM — is actually spent, and the unused part is returned to your wallet shortly afterwards. The app shows the exact amount before you confirm — the current figure, not an estimate published here. The full breakdown is in Fees & Gas.

Usually within moments of your transaction being confirmed.

When all of Hipo’s free GRAM is already committed to the current validation round, the protocol mints your hGRAM once that round is committed instead of immediately. Your deposit is held until then and the app shows how long is left. Your GRAM is never at risk while it waits.

Yes. Connect the multisig to the Hipo app as usual, type an amount and press Stake or Unstake: the app hands the order to your wallet app, which creates it as a multisig request for the other signers to approve. Check that your multisig is the selected wallet before signing — the link cannot choose it for you.

This works for staking and for unstaking all or part of your balance. If no wallet app opens, the app shows the order’s three values so you can create it by hand — what multisig.ton.org calls an “Arbitrary order” — alongside the plain-transfer method: send the GRAM you want to stake plus 0.1 GRAM as a fee prepayment to the Hipo treasury with the text comment “d”, or 0.1 GRAM with the comment “w” to unstake your entire balance. The full procedure, including the treasury address, is in Staking Without the App.

No. Rewards accrue automatically into the hGRAM exchange rate every validation round — there is no separate claim step.

The amount of hGRAM in your wallet never changes on its own; what changes is how much GRAM each hGRAM is worth. That holds wherever the token sits — in your wallet, in a pool or in another protocol.

Not instantly. Your rewards start once your deposit is working in a validation round, which can be up to about 18 hours away depending on when you stake.

After that the hGRAM exchange rate updates round by round rather than continuously: once a round has finished and its rewards have been recovered, the rate rises and your hGRAM is worth more GRAM.

APY is the estimated yearly reward rate. Hipo’s APY is not fixed and is never guaranteed: it moves with the rewards TON itself pays out, with the rates validators bid in Hipo’s marketplace and with how much GRAM is staked, so it can go up or down over time.

The live number and its history are on the Stats page — that is the figure to rely on, not one published here.

You do not receive separate reward payments. Rewards are folded into the value of hGRAM: the amount of hGRAM in your wallet never changes on its own, what changes is how much GRAM each hGRAM is worth.

When a validation round is settled, its rewards are split in this order:

1. The borrowing validator receives the share agreed when it won the loan.
2. The governance fee on validation rewards is taken — set by the Hipo DAO and currently 0%.
3. Everything left returns to Hipo’s treasury, which raises the hGRAM exchange rate for every holder.

No. Hipo charges no management or subscription fee, and nothing is skimmed from your rewards as they accrue.

The one protocol-level fee is a governance fee on validation rewards, set by the Hipo DAO, currently 0% — so validation rewards pass through to hGRAM holders in full. Any change would go through governance and is visible on-chain.

hGRAM is the token you receive when you stake GRAM with Hipo — a jetton on TON. Think of it as a receipt for your staked GRAM: it shows how much of the staking pool belongs to you.

That receipt is the point. While your GRAM earns staking rewards, hGRAM stays yours to hold, send or use in TON DeFi, so your stake stays useful instead of locked.

No. hGRAM has one exchange rate against GRAM for everybody, set by Hipo’s treasury contract. It started close to 1 GRAM and becomes redeemable for more GRAM after each validation round that earns rewards, because those rewards go into the pool while the amount of hGRAM stays the same.

The live rate is shown in the app and charted on the Stats page.

Yes. hGRAM is an ordinary TON jetton, so you can send it to any wallet, swap it on DeDust, STON.fi, TONCO, GroypFi and swap.coffee, supply it to pools on DeDust, STON.fi and TONCO, and hold it in wallets such as TON Space and MyTonWallet — the current list is on the DeFi page.

Using hGRAM in DeFi does not stop it earning: staking rewards keep accruing in the hGRAM exchange rate regardless of where you hold or use the token. Each protocol does add smart-contract, liquidity and price-impact risk on top of ordinary staking risk, so only use official, audited protocols and verify links before connecting a wallet.

Yes. You can swap hGRAM for GRAM or other TON assets on the DEXs listed on the DeFi page, subject to available liquidity, or unstake it through Hipo to receive GRAM back. The two are different prices: a swap settles at the pool’s rate, so check the price impact; an unstake settles at the protocol’s rate.

Open the Unstake page, choose how much hGRAM you want to redeem, pick how you want it processed — Full or Instant — and confirm the transaction in your wallet. When the unstake completes, you receive GRAM back in the same wallet.

They are the two ways Hipo can process an unstake, and you choose between them before confirming.

• Full waits until the current validation round ends. Your GRAM keeps earning until then, so this gives you the better exchange rate. It always goes through, and it is the default.
• Instant is processed straight away, at a slightly lower rate, from the GRAM Hipo is holding free at that moment. Hipo handles it itself — no DEX or third party involved — and it succeeds only while that free liquidity covers your amount.

If you need GRAM right away and your amount is within the currently available instant liquidity, choose Instant. Otherwise, Full gives you the better exchange rate.

Instant: seconds. If it succeeds, your GRAM arrives in the same chain of messages. If Hipo is not holding enough free GRAM at that moment, the option is unavailable and you use Full instead.

Full: typically under 18 hours, up to 36 hours in the worst case. It is settled after the current validation round ends, and the app shows how long is left before your GRAM arrives.

That wait comes from TON’s validation cycle, not from a Hipo lock-up: a round runs for roughly 18 hours, and stakes stay frozen for about 9 more hours before they can be recovered. Hipo spreads its stake across consecutive rounds, so a recovery window opens roughly every 18 hours. A Full unstake lands somewhere in that cycle, so a typical wait is around 9 hours and a single-round wait tops out near 18. The 36-hour worst case is when all of Hipo’s funds are locked in rounds and a request just misses one window and waits for the next.

Instant unstaking pays you out of the GRAM Hipo is holding free at that moment, so it is limited by how much of it there is. Most of the staked GRAM is committed to validation rounds and cannot be released early.

The app shows the largest amount you can unstake instantly and warns you if you enter more. When the limit is low or Instant is unavailable, unstake a smaller amount instantly or use Full for the whole balance — Full always goes through.

With Full, yes. Your GRAM keeps earning until the round it is committed to ends, which is why Full returns more GRAM than Instant for the same hGRAM.

With Instant there is no waiting period to earn through — you are paid out at once, at the rate that applies then.

Either way, once your GRAM is back in your wallet it is no longer earning staking rewards through Hipo.

Hipo does not charge a fee for unstaking. You pay a small TON network gas fee, which the app shows before you confirm.

Part of that gas is a prepayment: whatever is left over is returned together with your final GRAM payout, not at the moment you request the unstake.

Hipo is built to be verified, not trusted. Its smart contracts are open source and have been through four independent audits (see Has Hipo been audited?), and staking, unstaking and reward distribution all happen on-chain, so every step can be checked on the TON blockchain. Validators lock their own GRAM as collateral before they borrow stake, so a slashing penalty is taken from that collateral, not from your stake.

It is not risk-free, though — see Can I lose my funds?.

Yes — four times. Hipo’s smart contracts have been through four independent audits: Quantstamp (April 2025) and ProgramCrafter (March 2024) on the v2 contracts, and TonTech and Daniil Sedov (October 2023) on v1. Every report is published in full at github.com/HipoFinance/audits.

Yes. No staking or DeFi protocol is risk-free, and Hipo does not guarantee returns. The risks:

• Smart-contract risk — a bug could affect funds, audits notwithstanding.
• TON network risk — Hipo depends on the TON blockchain working normally.
• Validator underperformance — penalties come out of the validator’s own collateral (sized to cover the maximum penalty plus the promised reward), not your stake.
• Thin instant liquidity — Instant unstaking draws only on Hipo’s free GRAM and is not always available; Full unstaking always settles after the current round.
• APY variability — rewards change and are never fixed.

DeFi use adds each protocol’s own smart-contract, liquidity and price-impact risk — see Can I use hGRAM in DeFi?. Each risk, and what Hipo does about it, is covered in Risks.

On any TON blockchain explorer, such as tonviewer.com. Staking, unstaking, reward distribution and every other on-chain action are public and can be checked by anyone.

The Hipo app links straight to the treasury contract on an explorer, so you can inspect the contract holding the staked GRAM without having to look up its address.

Nobody picks them. Instead of a validator list chosen by the team, Hipo runs a permissionless on-chain marketplace: any validator that meets the smart contract’s requirements can bid for staked GRAM, with no approval from anyone.

Validators compete on the reward rate they promise to pay, and each one must lock GRAM of its own as collateral before it can borrow. In every validation round the contracts lend the pooled stake to the best bids automatically. The selection is transparent on-chain and does not depend on a single validator, which also supports decentralisation on TON.

Read more in the validators documentation.

Before a validator can borrow staked GRAM for a validation round, it must lock GRAM of its own covering the maximum slashing penalty for that round plus the reward it promised to pay.

If the validator is slashed or underperforms, the penalty is taken from that collateral rather than from staked GRAM — which is what protects stakers and gives validators a direct reason to operate reliably.

Because validators bid against each other for the stake. Each round the pooled GRAM goes to the validators promising the best reward rate, and they pay the rate they promised, backed by their own collateral.

The resulting rate moves with the market; the live number and its history are on the Stats page.

HPO is Hipo’s governance and profit-sharing token. It is a TON jetton, separate from hGRAM — you do not need HPO to stake.

It exists to align stakers, HPO holders and validators with the protocol’s growth: holders share in Hipo’s revenue, vote on its decisions and earn more HPO through Hipo Club. See the HPO page.

Three things:

1. A share of protocol revenue. Revenue comes from Hipo’s staking operations. Profit shares for HPO holders are calculated after each validation round and paid out at the end of each Hipo Club season — see Profit sharing.
2. A vote. Holding HPO lets you vote on proposals in the Hipo DAO, from the governance fee to tokenomics and treasury decisions.
3. A Hipo Club level. Holding your rewarded HPO keeps your Club level — selling it resets you to Level 1 — and a higher level earns more HPO on the hGRAM you hold each round; levels rise through Club activity (an instant upgrade or the seasonal upgrade).

Hipo Club is Hipo’s rewards programme for stakers and HPO holders, joined through the Hipo Club bot on Telegram.

Hipo Club HPO rewards accrue after every validation round on the hGRAM you hold, at a rate set by your Club level, and can be withdrawn once the accrued balance passes 1,000 HPO. Holding the HPO you were rewarded keeps your level — selling it resets you to Level 1 — and levels rise through Club activity (an instant upgrade or the seasonal upgrade). Details are in the Hipo Club docs.

The quickest route is Hipo Chat on Telegram, where community members and moderators answer questions.

For announcements, follow the Hipo channel on Telegram or @hipofinance on X.

Hipo will never ask for your seed phrase or private keys. Nobody from the team ever needs them.

Wait for network confirmation and check the transaction’s status in your wallet or on a TON explorer.

A Full unstake is not pending, though — it is waiting for the current validation round to end before it pays out. See How long does unstaking take?.

The Hipo documentation covers the protocol in depth, and stats.hipo.finance tracks live protocol numbers.

The contracts are open source at github.com/HipoFinance.