Telegram founder suggests launching NFT marketplace for usernames

In a message posted on his personal Telegram group, Pavel Durov said that he was really impressed by the successful domain/wallet name auction conducted by The Open Network (TON) in June.

TON is a layer-1 blockchain protocol designed by the Telegram team in 2018, that allows users to assign human readable names to their crypto-wallets, smart contracts and websites. The network utilizes a Proof-of-Stake (Pos) consensus mechanism to support NFTs and decentralized applications (DApps).

“Imagine how successful Telegram with its 700 million users could be if we put reserved @usernames, groups and channel links for auction.

This would create a new platform where username holders could transfer them to interested parties in protected deals with ownership secured on the blockchain via NFT-like smart contracts,” said the Telegram founder.

The founder also suggested bringing other elements part of Telegram’s ecosystem, including stickers, emojis and channels to the NFT marketplace in the future.

Pavel confirmed that if the messaging platform were to launch NFTs, it would be done using TON smart contracts which are written in FunC programming language developed by Telegram.

“Our team can write bullet-proof smart contracts for TON, since it was us who invented its smart contract language (FunC). So we are inclined to try out TON as the underlying blockchain for our future marketplace,” wrote Pavel.

TON, then known as Telegram Open Network, was developed to be the digital payments platform for the messaging app. However, the network was sanctioned by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the unregistered preliminary sale of $1.7 billion Gram tokens. After losing the court case to the SEC in 2020, Durov stepped away from TON which was then revived by open source developers as The Open Network.