Telegram may soon offer a marketplace to auction addresses, founder Pavel Durov said. In a post on his personal Telegram channel, which has 651,000 subscribers, Durov suggested that millions of reserved Telegram addresses could be auctioned off as assets on the blockchain. Durov wrote that he was inspired by The Open Network’s (TON) recent sale of more than 2,000 ‘.ton’ domain names – a sale totaling 2,392,002 Toncoins, each of which was trading at $1.33 (roughly Rs. 100) at the time. Writing, approximately $3 million (approx. Rs. 24 crores).
“Imagine how successful Telegram’s 700 million users could be if we auctioned reserved @ usernames, groups and channel links,” He said,
Durov suggested that Telegram could use similar technology to launch a new marketplace that could be used to buy and sell “attractive t.me addresses like @storm or @royal and all four-letter usernames:”
“This will create a new platform where username holders can transfer them to interested parties in protected transactions – with secure ownership on the blockchain through smart contracts like NFT. Other elements of the Telegram ecosystem, including channels, stickers or emojis, can also come forward. Be part of this marketplace,” he added. said
Although TON was originally designed by Telegram, control of the blockchain was handed over to the Open Network community in June 2020. The firm was forced to divest as part of the ownership. Settlement Agreement to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which filed a complaint against Telegram for allegedly selling $1.7 billion in unregistered securities in the form of GRAM tokens.
That said, Telegram is still closely involved with the TON blockchain. The messaging platform now allows users to exchange Toncoins directly through bots that automate activities on the platform. Although Telegram allows these bots, it does not support them.
The first auction on TON DNS went live on July 30, and similar to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) “.eth” domain, the “.ton” variant allows users to access decentralized applications in a simple way without typing too much time. A string of letters and numbers from their wallet addresses.
