Author: Wu Hai, PANews

On December 7, Telegram officially announced that users can have a Telegram account without a SIM card and log in using the anonymous number supported by the blockchain provided on the Fragment platform. PANews has published an article introducing Fragment, a username auction platform launched by Telegram, where users can bid for their favorite Telegram accounts.

According to the data of TON blockchain browser, since Fragment was launched more than a month ago, it has obtained 62.82 million US dollars through the user name auction. Among them, the @news account with the highest auction price was sold for 994,000 TON tokens, which is equivalent to 1.809 million US dollars at the current price. At the same time, according to official information, the price of anonymous accounts will rise. Starting from 8 pm Beijing time on December 13, the price of random numbers and the minimum bid for the user name to start the auction will increase by 1 TON token every 3 hours until it reaches 99 TON tokens, at which time these random numbers will also stop being sold.

How to log into Telegram anonymously?

According to Telegram's official blog published in June 2022, it is one of the top five applications in terms of annual downloads, with over 700 million active users per month. However, users must use their mobile phone numbers to register and log in, a process that can easily lead to user privacy leaks. In addition, because some users have not changed their privacy settings, their personal mobile phone numbers and other information are completely exposed to strangers, or strangers can search and add friends by mobile phone number, which has led to many users being deceived.

Telegram has launched anonymous number login supported by blockchain. Users no longer need to apply for a mobile phone number to register and use it. Instead, they only need to save their TON wallet mnemonics that store their usernames and collections. This provides users with a safer login method on a larger scale and opens a new era of privacy. At the same time, Telegram is one of the most important communication tools for many crypto projects, institutions and communities. This move by Telegram officials also responds to the privacy needs of users in the crypto community.

To achieve anonymous login, users only need to log in to the Fragment platform to bid for their favorite usernames. Previously, users could only bid for usernames officially released by Telegram. Now, the personal username auction function has been launched (officially defined as basic usernames). Users can put their existing basic usernames up for auction on their personal homepage on the Fragment platform (this process requires logging in to their personal Telegram account and TON wallet at the same time to receive the proceeds from the successful auction). The auction period is 7 days. After the auction is successful, the basic username will be converted into a collection and distributed to the winner.

Note: The usernames in the attached pictures are for example purposes only and do not represent any official accounts.

Any basic username cannot be transferred to an on-chain address or converted into a collection before it is successfully auctioned. During the auction, the user can cancel the auction at any time before the first bid, but once the first bid appears, the auction cannot be canceled.

After the basic username is successfully auctioned, the initial listing owner will receive all the proceeds after deducting the 5% platform fee and conversion fee. Of course, the initial owner can also participate in and win the auction themselves to retain ownership of the personal username as a collectible.

If you are the winner of the auction, after obtaining the basic username collection, you can click the TON wallet in the upper right corner of the Fragment platform and select "Convert to Collection" or click "Convert Username to Collection" in "My Assets". At this time, the basic username has been converted into an NFT collection in the Tonkeeper wallet, and it can be transferred to other wallets for free. It can also be used to sell to users who prefer this basic username to earn income, and there is no conversion fee for this sale. It can also be configured to a personal profile, group or channel on Telegram, and you can use this username to log in to Telegram anonymously.

It should be noted that once a username is successfully auctioned, it will become an on-chain collection, and the transaction cannot be revoked or rolled back. If you want to continue using it later, you may have to pay a high price to buy it from other collectors. Therefore, users should consider carefully before listing basic usernames for auction.

Some basic usernames cannot participate in the auction. This may be because the personal Telegram account does not have a 2FA password set, the setting time is too short, the username has not been owned long enough, the username has been moved recently (for example, from a personal account to a personal channel), or a witch attack is attempted.

Anonymous login is a product built by Telegram based on blockchain technology, which makes privacy more thorough. In addition, Telegram has been continuously optimizing the privacy features that benefit users in its products. In 2013, Telegram introduced the message self-immolation function. Users can delete any message they send or receive for both parties without leaving any trace. You can also set an automatic deletion timer to clean up personal chat records after a period of time.

Now, Telegram has optimized the original elimination of past footprints and launched the elimination function for future footprints. Users can now set a global auto-deletion timer to automatically delete messages in all new chats. The timer will automatically apply to all new chats between users (regardless of who initiated it) and all new groups created, so that users can fully control all past and future messages. This, combined with the design of anonymous login without a mobile phone number, achieves ultimate privacy.

TON Ecosystem Overview

According to Coinmarketcap data, TON's current circulation market value is 2.224 billion US dollars, ranking 25th in the entire network, and the total circulation market value is 9.069 billion US dollars. According to its blockchain browser data, the current TON domain name auction is 382, ​​and the basic user name auction is 3333. The number of on-chain addresses is 1.559 million, the number of nodes is 236, which has increased compared to the end of October, and the number of nominated nodes is 5571. The current network pledged amount is 19.98 million TON, with an annualized rate of return of 8.16%.

According to defillama data, the total locked value on the TON chain is 490,000 US dollars, all of which is generated by its decentralized exchange STON.fi. According to its official media information, STON.fi was launched in May 2022. It has been more than half a year since its launch, and its total locked value is not ideal.

The TON ecosystem is currently relatively poor, and the current demand mainly relies on the username auction function launched by Telegram. Judging from the sales data mentioned above, users highly recognize the community value generated by Telegram usernames.

In addition to Telegram, other communication tools built on blockchain technology include Blockscan, which was launched by the Etherscan blockchain browser team on January 26, 2022. However, they are limited to simple anonymous communication and do not meet more user needs. Relatively speaking, Telegram has more comprehensive functions and has established long-term user usage habits.

Telegram naturally has the ability to become a Web3 infrastructure. If it continues to build products that are more suitable for the crypto community through blockchain technology, its narrative space will be more imaginative.