Thursday, Telegram, a famous instant messaging service, opened a market for Telegram handles.
“This will enable Telegram handles, comprising both usernames and channels, to be bought and sold using Toncoin,” explained Telegram in a press release.
Toncoin (TON) is the token of The Open Network. The Open Network is the spiritual successor to Telegram’s independent blockchain plans, which were stopped two years ago by federal regulators.
The auction is held on Fragment.com, a “detached website” for those who choose to participate. Users can search for and buy three- to four-character domains, auction their current handles, and connect pre-purchased handles to off-chain accounts using this page.
Telegram will first offer four-to-five character handles for sale, with the least expensive going for at least 126 Toncoin ($200). Currently, some of the auctions with the largest minimum bids are for handles such as “bank,” “casino,” and “auto,” with minimum bids over 30,000 TON.
In many instances, the original price will decline daily if no one submits a greater bid than the minimum bid.
“For the first time, social media users will be able to transparently prove that they own their handles thanks to their tokenization on the TON blockchain,” said Andrew Rogozov, founding member of the TON Foundation.
The marketplace is based on The Open Network (TON), a distributed ledger that concluded a similar auction for domain and wallet names in August. At the time, the deal achieved total sales of almost $3 million worth of 2,392,002 Toncoin.
CEO Pavel Durov was encouraged by the company’s success, which culminated in its latest initiative. In his personal channel, the CEO hinted at adding a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram by employing smart contracts similar to NFTs.
Telegram provided multiple justifications for starting the auction via TON. It offers more scalable transactions than Ethereum and is the spiritual successor of the Telegram Open Network. “The developers at Telegram are intimately familiar with the [programming] language,” said the company.
In 2020, Telegram was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for allegedly selling unregistered securities worth $1.7 billion through its GRAM coins. As part of a settlement agreement, the SEC required the corporation to hand over management of the blockchain to its community in 2020, so establishing “The Open Network” as it exists today.
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