Jessy, Jinse Finance
On May 9th, Telegram launched a Gift Market, which is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collectibles market based on the TON blockchain. In October 2024, Telegram introduced the "Gifts" feature, allowing users to send personalized animated artworks and messages to contacts, which can be minted as NFTs and then sold on specific markets.
The launch of the Gift Market enables gift recipients to choose to display or sell these gifts on their profile pages in exchange for internal circulation tokens called Stars. Of course, users can also directly purchase gifts using Stars within the Gift Market.
The direct impact is further improving the Telegram NFT market ecosystem, providing users with a more convenient marketplace for "gift" transactions. More profoundly, this move once again expands the product categories of social assets on Telegram.
Development of Telegram Gifts
In October 2024, the gift feature was launched on Telegram, which is the core of Telegram's NFT ecosystem. Users can send personalized animated artworks and messages to contacts. Some gifts are designated as limited edition items that can be converted into NFTs.
The feature's introduction allows users to seamlessly convert digital gifts and interactions into blockchain-based assets, and these NFTs can be integrated into Telegram's gaming ecosystem. From a cultural perspective, it enriches the cultural ecosystem within TG communities and creates many new gameplay possibilities for TG mini-games.
By January 2025, the external NFT trading platform Getgems already supported trading Telegram gift NFTs. Later, Telegram also launched a Bot within its platform for trading these gift NFTs, with TON as the trading currency.
Currently, the top collection on the Getgems market is Telegram's anonymous phone numbers, which can be used to create Telegram accounts not linked to SIM cards. The current floor price has risen to 549 TON.
In fact, in 2022, Telegram had already launched its own NFT trading platform called Fragment, where users could trade anonymous numbers, user accounts, purchase advertising services, and Telegram Premium subscriptions.
This Gift Market launch allows users to buy and sell gifts using Stars, the platform's internal virtual currency, and these traded gifts are no longer limited to official releases. In other words, users can list their owned gifts for sale and earn Stars, forming a complete economic cycle.
When selling, users can open gifts in their personal profile, click the sell button, set an expected price in Stars, and list the gift in the market. Successfully listed gifts will be publicly displayed in the marketplace and on the corresponding user's profile page. Buying a Gift is even simpler - just hold Star tokens and purchase in the market, with the option to buy for oneself or for contacts.
Social Trading is the Next Focus
Before the emergence of gift NFTs, Telegram's NFT-related transactions mainly revolved around social assets. Currently, if these gifts owned by users can be further empowered by communities in the future, this will bring a new social and economic interaction element to Telegram.
With the appearance of gift NFTs, Telegram is actually expanding the boundaries of social assets. When blockchain technology was first born, a major application scenario was asset confirmation. Telegram is gradually transferring Web2 social assets to the Web3 world, from social accounts to gifts.
This year, Telegram's key focus is on social trading, and gradually putting user social assets on-chain and enabling their trade opens up this economic chain. The "gifts" exchanged between friends during chats will no longer have just memorial significance but also economic value, which might be the first step in getting users to accept social trading.
