Telegram plans to let users auction off usernames for Crypto

How much is your digital identity worth to you, or at least, how much is it worth in crypto? Well, thanks to instant messaging app Telegram, you can soon find out. Telegram has planning to let users post their digital identifier in a public marketplace to see if others think your name is worth a chunk of change too.

Telegram announced in a official thread Thursday that the company is almost ready to release an auction platform for usernames on the TON blockchain, AKA The Open Network, which was originally developed and powered by Telegram. Transactions will supposedly use the blockchain’its native cryptocurrency Toncoin.

Back in August, Telegram founder Pavel Durov mentioned he was interested in such an auction after seeing how much crypto people were making by auctioning wallets and domain names on their old blockchain.

“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 up for auction,” Durov wrote. He added that ownership of these usernames would be “secured” on the blockchain similar to NFTs. He also mentioned that other elements of Telegram such as stickers, channels or even emojis could also be auctioned.

The founder also said that in addition to users’ t.me addresses (in other words, their usernames), he said that any “four letter usernames” could be auctioned off, which would include “@bank, @club, @ games, @gift.” Not to be lewd, but there is one few others “4-letter word” I would like to include in response to trying to sell the very concept of digital identity.

If, like mine, your brain went into prolonged silence as you heard the news, followed by a question asked in a thin whisper, “why?” then you will be interested to hear that selling usernames is not so original. As pointed out by The blockusernames on the Ethereum blockchain have long been for sale through Ethereum naming service. You don’t have to look far to find many other projects that have come on the scene and announced their intention to sell NFTs of users’ own digital identifier for online gaming.

Telegram has experimented with crypto before, although it had to abandon efforts on its own Telegram Open Network and Gram cryptocurrency after they were investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for selling unregistered securities. After a federal judge ruled in favor of the SEC, Telegram called it up on Gram and withdrew from development on the blockchain. The developers hand control of the blockchain to the TON Foundation in 2021.

In accordance BusinessofApps, Telegram has 500 million active monthly users and has been widely used in countries like Iran thanks to end-to-end encryption that allows anonymous messaging. This anonymity is a key selling point for Telegram. According to the Korea Herald, the app received a slight increase in popularity recently after the South Korean company Kakao and its app KakaoTalk recently suffered a multi-day blackout that cut communications for millions of users.

But this adherence to anonymity has caused some friction with governments. This week, Germany fined Telegram $5 million for not setting up systems to report illegal content. Telegram is often used by many far radical online right-wing groups plus political dissidents because of its anonymity.

There are other privacy apps, including Signal. While Durov and Telegram have gone after other messaging apps like WhatsApp for their obvious connections to the data maelstrom that is Meta, Signal’s new president Meredith Whittaker has criticised Telegram for using cloud backup.