What could Telegram give TON as a birthday gift?

Tomorrow, TON Blockchain turns five. On May 26, 2021, the “community” voted to rename testnet2 into mainnet, and shortly afterward, NewTON became TON Foundation.

Birthdays are usually about gifts, so we decided to think on Telegram’s behalf: what could it give to its own blockchain?

Obviously, there are many ways TON could be integrated deeper into Telegram. But there is also a limitation: things like this always come with legal risks. Otherwise, it is hard to explain why Telegram is still mostly built around Stars internally, rather than Toncoin.

The first possible gift is TON payments through the Bot API. Right now, bot developers can accept payments in Telegram Stars through the standard Telegram Payments mechanism. A logical next step would be the ability to issue invoices directly in Toncoin: the user pays for a purchase from their internal TON balance, while the bot receives payment confirmation without unnecessary intermediaries.

Especially since the first step in this direction has already been made. Telegram already has an internal TON balance. Of course, it is not a full-fledged wallet, but rather just an option for paying for Telegram Gifts. Still, the foundation for future integration is already there.

The second option is paid MTProto proxies. Telegram has long had its own protocol for bypassing blocks, but proxy monetization has never been particularly elegant: once a user has a link, they can share it with anyone. In theory, TON could help turn this into a proper marketplace where users pay for traffic and proxy owners receive rewards.

TON Payments could be especially relevant here. If the technology really enables very fast and low-cost transfers, it would be a good fit for small recurring payments — for example, proxy traffic. A user tops up a deposit, connects to a node, and then micropayments are charged invisibly in the background, with billing possible even per byte.

Of course, all of this is still speculation. We do not know what Telegram can afford to do legally, and what will remain a beautiful idea on paper. But if we are talking specifically about a gift for TON, what it needs most right now is not congratulations, but a new pump new usage scenarios inside Telegram.

Although, to be honest, attention would also be enough. So, Pavel Durov, even a simple announcement of the next MTONGA step on TON’s birthday would work for us.

Do you have any ideas on how Telegram could integrate TON even deeper?

@thedailyton