Telegram launches new gift market social trading closer

Jessy, Golden Finance

On May 9, Telegram launched the Gift Market, a NFT collectibles market based on the TON chain. In October 2024, Telegram launched the "Gift" feature, where users can send personalized animated art and messages to contacts that can be cast into NFTs and then sold in a specific market.

The current launch of the gift market allows gift recipients to choose to display or sell these gifts on their profile pages directly in exchange for internal circulation tokens Stars. Of course, you can also buy gifts directly in the gift market with Stars.

The direct impact of this move is to further improve the TelegrmNFT market ecosystem, allowing users to have a more convenient "gift" trading venue. A deeper point is that this move has once again expanded the product categories of social assets on Telegram.

This year, Telegram's focus is on social trading, and the gifts given to friends will also be cast into NFTs, and transactions can be conducted directly within Telegram. This is the specific implementation of this direction of efforts.

The development history of Telegram gifts

In October 2024, the gift function in Telegram was launched, which is the core of the Telegram NFT ecosystem. Users can send personalized animated artwork and messages to contacts. Some of these gifts are also designated as limited edition items and can be redeemed for NFTs.

The launch of this feature allows users to seamlessly convert digital gifts and interactions into blockchain-based assets, and NFTs can also be integrated into the Telegram gaming ecosystem. From the perspective of cultural ecology, it enriches the cultural ecology within the TG community and creates many new ways of playing for mini-games within TG.

By January 2025, external NFT trading platform Getgems can already support Telegram's gift NFT trading. Later, Telegram also launched a bot inside its own that can trade these gifts NFTs, with the transaction currency TON.

Currently in the Getgems market, TOP ONE's collection is Telegram anonymous mobile phone numbers, which can be used to create Telegram accounts that do not bind SIM cards. The current floor price has increased to 549TON.

In fact, in 2022, Telegram launched its own NFT trading platform called Fragment. Anonymous numbers and users can be traded on this platform, or you can purchase advertising services and Telegram Premium subscription.

The launch of this gift market allows users to use internal virtual currencies such as Stars to trade gifts, and the gifts for these transactions are no longer limited to official issuance. In other words, users can put the gifts they own on the shelves and sell them, earning Stars, forming a complete economic cycle.

When selling, users can open the gift they already own in their profile, click the Sale button, set the expected price in Stars, and then put the gift on the market. Gifts that are successfully listed will not only be displayed publicly in the market, but their corresponding user profile page will also be displayed. It is even easier to buy a Gift. You only need to hold Star tokens and buy them in the market. You can choose to buy them for yourself or for your contacts.

Social trading is the focus of the next step

Before the appearance of gift NFT, the transactions related to Telegram's NFT were mainly some social assets on Telegram. Currently, if the gifts that users have can be empowered by the community in the future, it will also bring a new social and economic interaction element to Telegram.

With the emergence of gift NFT, it is actually Telegram that expands the boundaries of social assets. When blockchain technology was first born, a big application scenario was the confirmation of assets. From social accounts to gifts, only Telegram transfers Web2's social assets to the link in the Web3 world little by little.

This year, Telegram’s focus is on social transactions, and putting users’ social assets little by little, trading them, and opening up this economic link is undoubtedly an important link in social transactions. When chatting with friends, it is a "gift" that gives each other, so it no longer has only memorial meaning, but also has economic value. This may also be the first step to let users accept social transactions.