Have you ever thought of paying for a username on social media? Well, the instant messaging app Telegram wants to make it possible.
On Thursday, the company announced that it would soon release a username auction platform on The Open Network (TON) blockchain. This update confirms Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s initial disclosure of the project in August.
Some usernames, like “casino.ton,” has a price tag of more than $200,000. “If The Open Network can achieve these results, imagine the potential of a similar success with this new project,” he said.
Telegram has over 700 million registered users. He further said that other elements of the telegram app, like emojis, stickers, and channels, could later become part of this new development.
Paying for usernames is not new in the crypto industry. For example, there have been hundreds of thousands of people who have paid for usernames on Ethereum.
However, it’s not a Web3 phenomenon. Many social media users find getting the username they want more challenging because someone else has used it. This makes them go the extra mile to try and obtain the username they desire.
Some online video tutorials suggest ways to make username requests on a platform like Twitter or Instagram. There is also training about reassigning unused usernames and other elaborate copyright schemes.
Some services and users even get usernames on social media by hacking the accounts of the original owner. Telegram started exploring a blockchain solution in 2018 and developing the Telegram Open Network.
In addition, the social media company earned up to $1.7 billion from a private sale of TON tokens. Telegram was accused and sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in October 2019 over the unauthorized sale of its TON tokens.
As a result, the company abandoned the project in 2020 because of too much pressure from regulators. However, Open-source developers didn’t stop working on the project and decided to rebrand it this year as The Open Network in a live mainnet.
Telegram’s Userbase Keeps Growing
According to stats from BusinessofApps, Telegram has over 700 million active users. It is also one of the common social media apps in countries like Iran because of its end-to-end encryption allowing anonymous messaging.
Leading Korean media outlet, the Korea Herald claimed that Telegram’s user base increased slightly recently. The South Korean company Kakao and its app KakaoTalk recently had a breakdown that stopped millions of users from communicating.
Meanwhile, the government of Germany fined Telegram $5 million this week for not creating systems to report illegal content on the platform.
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