Telegram Chief Pavel Durov Plans to Auction Usernames Using NFT-like Smart Contracts

Pavel Durov who founded the encrypted messaging platform Telegram has floated a new idea of a marketplace which will auction highly sought-after usernames using NFT-like smart contracts.

The recent suggestion came as Telegram successfully conducted domain name auctions over The Open Network (TON), a Layer-1 blockchain network designed by Telegram developers themselves.

The team recently launched its TON DNS services that would allow users to assign human readable names to smart contracts, crypto wallets, and websites. In his message on Telegram’s “Durov channel”, the Telegram chief said that he was “really impressed by the success of the auction TON recently conducted for their domain/wallet names. Imagine how successful Telegram with its 700 million users could be if we put reserved @ usernames, group and channel links for auction”.

Durov added that Telegram could leverage the same technology to pull out a marketplace that would buy and sell catchy username addresses on the messaging app. He added: “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. Other elements of the Telegram ecosystem, including channels, stickers or emoji, could later also become part of this marketplace”.

The TON DNS is very much similar to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS). Similar to the .eth domains, Telegram offers .ton domain names which allow users to access decentralized applications in a simple way without needing to type long string of letters or numbers from their wallet addresses.

The TON Network uses the FunC programming language to launch smart contracts on the blockchain. If Telegram seeks to launch NFTs, they would be mostly on similar standards.

Considering that Durov and his team have already worked extensively on The Open Network (TON), integrating NFT-like smart contracts would be easier for them.

The Telegram chief stated: “When it comes to scalability and speed, TON probably has the best technology to host such decentralized sales. Our team can write bullet-proof smart contracts for TON (since it was us who invented its smart-contract language), so we are inclined to try out TON as the underlying blockchain for our future marketplace”.

Telegram had initially developed TON as a function of digital payments platform on the application. However, it was at odds with the U.S. SEC for conducting its $1.7 billion sale of TON Gram tokens. After losing the legal battle with the SEC in mid-2020, Durov stepped away from the project. Since then open source developers have been working on the project as The Open Network. TON uses the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism while supporting different features such as dApps, NFTs, and staking.