Telegram’s Creator Has Floated an NFT-related Idea
Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram messenger, is impressed by the TON DNS auction, which he describes as a success.
To capitalize on it, he suggested creating a new marketplace that could be used to buy and sell “catchy t.me addresses like @storm or @royal, and all four-letter usernames,” including @bank, @club, @game, @gift etc.
If TON has been able to achieve these results, imagine how successful Telegram with its 700 million users could be if we put reserved @ usernames, group and channel links for auction.he wrote.
A move like this said Durov, “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.”
He clarified that elements of Telegram’s ecosystem such as channels, stickers, or emoji, could later also become part of this marketplace.
According to Durov, such a solution would not be that difficult to implement as “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.”
To remind, TON was originally created as a means of facilitating digital payments on Telegram, a move that did not go down well with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that took the company to court for an unregistered preliminary sale of $1.7 billion of Gram tokens.
In mid-2020 Durov’s team lost the case, with Durov opting to focus on Telegram instead. Since then, TON has revamped itself, launching the so-called Toncoin.
The first auctions on TON DNS, a service that allows users to assign a human-readable name to crypto wallets, smart contracts, and websites, went live on July 30.
Previously, Gagarin News covered the looming ApeCoin crisis.
