Telegram CEO Mulls Idea of an NFT Marketplace for Usernames

Pavel Durov, CEO of messaging app Telegram is mulling the idea of a new marketplace where usernames can be traded via NFT smart contract.

Durov shared the idea in a message on his telegram channel, “Durov’s channel” while expressing his excitement over the recent TON auction for wallet and domain names.

Drawing inspiration from the success of The Open Network (TON) sales, Durov suggests that usernames could be auctioned as assets on the blockchain. Furthermore, Durov said with Telegram’s 700 million users there will be a variety of catchy usernames including all four letter usernames like @bank and @gift available for sale.

In addition to trading catchy usernames, Durov said other features of the messaging app including stickers, emojis, or channels could become a part of the marketplace.

The TON DNS sale was launched in July and over 2,000 .ton domain names were sold for a total of 2,392,002 Toncoin. The highest grossing domain name (wallet.ton) sold for 215,250 Toncoin.

The CEO is looking to adopt the TON blockchain which his team built to host the proposed marketplace.  

Aside from being the original developers of TON’s programming language, Durov says the blockchain’s speed, usability, and scalability give it an edge adding that they could easily write a bullet-proof smart contract for the network.

The TON network, formerly Telegram Open Network, was launched in 2018 alongside the messaging app. It was initially designed to process digital payments for Telegram.

The community-driven blockchain project uses a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism to allow fast transactions and support for a wide range of decentralized apps(Dapps).

Social media platforms integrate NFTs

Aside from Telegram, Meta, a social media giant in an effort to carve a footprint in the emerging metaverse market, has started rolling out NFTs in various countries after an initial testing phase.

The platform integrated Coinbase wallet and Dapper to allow users to showcase their NFT. Plans are also underway to allow users to display their NFTs on Facebook.

Twitter, another microblogging platform made its debut in the metaverse with an NFT profile picture feature for premium users.