Toncoin, Telegram’s official blockchain token, has printed positive gains as the overall market tries to recover. TON saw a price increase of 1.52% on the day while gaining ground against BTC and ETH. It also reached an intraday high of $1.71. However, it has retracted, sitting at $1.69 press time.

The blockchain’s native token has also had a positive week. Despite falling to $1.33 at the start of the week, it recovered quickly and posted a 5.57% increase. Toncoin’s positive moves can be attributed to its parent company, Telegram’s latest username feature.

Telegram Allows Users To Buy Unique Usernames

This week, Telegram officially launched a new feature that enables the auctioning off of usernames. Users of Telegram now have the ability to auction off their usernames for their accounts, public groups, or channels, as stated by Telegram. The feature is quite similar to the ENS domains on the Ethereum network. 

The auction was hosted by Fragment, a free marketplace for trading collectibles between users. According to Telegram, it’ll use the TON blockchain to secure the ownership and uniqueness of each username. The company also mentioned that users could create many aliases for their accounts, groups, and channels.

Telegram added:

For the first time in the history of social media, people have full ownership of their usernames. Long-time Telegram users who have been using short usernames they registered for early on can now benefit from the platform’s growth by selling their usernames in fair, transparent, fully decentralized auctions.

Toncoin Surges As New Accounts And Wallet Holders Increase

TON has also enjoyed surges in other areas, including the number of new accounts and wallets holding the token. As per data from CoinMarketCap, the number of wallets holding TON increased by over 12% in the last 7 days. On November 10, the number of unique wallet addresses was 2,546. However, it surged sharply on the 13th, adding over 200 unique addresses between then and today, the 16th. 

The number of new account registration on the blockchain has also increased since the start of November. Data obtained from the TON official Telegram channel noted a 1% rise between November 6th and 12th. This increased the number of new accounts to 1,421,079, up from 1,406,699. These increases don’t come as a surprise, given the launch of the Telegram username auction and Fragment marketplace. As of writing, TON’s market cap had jumped 1.46%, though trading its 24-hour trading volume was down over 30%.

The latest features on Telegram are a big step forward for Web3. In August, Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, first introduced the concept of username ownership being recorded on the blockchain. When Durov talked about the idea earlier this year, he said that “a little bit of Web 3.0” could be added to “Telegram in the coming weeks.” His comments at the time reflected his admiration for the TON Foundation’s successful domain name auction.

Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView.com