Telegram implements NFT of usernames and auctions

The founder of Telegram believes in innovation, reflecting on the success Telegram can achieve when 700 million users bid for usernames, group links and channels.

Telegram plans to make its own marketplace for username trading

Pavel Durovthe founder of the popular app Telegram, recently shared an idea for a marketplace that could leverage NFT-like smart contracts for the purpose of auctioning off sought-after usernames on the platform.

This proposal was made by Durov after the “successful” domain name auctions of The Open Network (TON)a Layer-1 blockchain originally designed by the Telegram team.

Previously, the company behind Telegram launched a TON DNS service on this blockchain, allowing users to assign names (within the human readable and understandable character range) to crypto wallet products, which are compatible. smart contracts and websites mid-July 2022.

On August 23, via “Durov’s Channel” in Telegram, founder Durov said he was really impressed by the success of the TON auction.

“Imagine how Telegram can reach 700 million users when we auction @usernames, group and channel links.”

The founder added that Telegram could harness similar technology to launch a marketplace where it can buy and sell hot t.me addresses like @storm or @royal and all four-letter usernames female.

“This will create a new platform where the owner of a username can sell it to interested people through protected transactions. There, ownership is secured on the blockchain through NFT-like smart contracts. […] Other elements of the Telegram ecosystem, including channels, stickers or emojis, may also later become part of this marketplace.”

It is expected that Telegram can use the TON network to deploy the marketplace

The first auctions on TON DNS took place on July 30th and are similar to domains “.eth” of Ethereum Name Service (ENS), variant “.ton” allows users to simply access decentralized applications without the need to enter long strings of letters and numbers when they access the wallet address.

The TON Network uses the FunC programming language for the TON Virtual Machine and launches specific smart contracts on the blockchain. If Telegram launches NFT, they will most likely be based on this standard.

Similar integrations could be fairly straightforward for Telegram, as Durov’s team developed TON, formerly known as Telegram Open Network, along with the messaging app back in 2018.

“Our team can write modification-proof smart contracts for TON (because we invented its smart contract language), so we would be inclined to try TON as the base blockchain for our future marketplace.”

TON was originally developed to act as a digital payment platform for Telegram. However, TON quickly ran into trouble with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over an unregistered preliminary sale of $1.7 billion in Gram tokens.

In mid-2020, after losing his trial with the SEC, Durov left the project to focus on Telegram. Later, open source developers revived the project thanks to the support of The Open Network.

The TON network uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and integrates various features such as staking, NFT, and decentralized applications. According to data from CoinMarketCapthe network’s native token Toncoin (TON) is up 8.69% in the past 24 hours, hovering around $1.46 at press time.