Telegram Gift Market is now live

(Source: Telegram)

On May 9, 2025, Telegram officially launched the Gift Marketplace, a digital gift market based on TON that supports NFT minting and trading. This marketplace is an extension of the gift feature launched in October 2024, when users could send animated art gifts to their contacts, which could be minted as NFTs and now can be publicly traded on the market.

The key is that these gifts are not just virtual toys, but assets that can be traded using the platform’s token Stars. Whether displayed on a profile page or put up for sale in exchange for Stars, they give these social media a real economic value.

Stars: The value anchor of social assets

The key operational unit of the gift market is Stars, a type of virtual token within the TON ecosystem. Users can:

• Use Stars to buy gifts (for yourself or friends)
• List the received gifts for exchange for Stars
• Further participate in other TON ecosystem activities (such as Telegram Bot games, NFT events, etc.)

In this way, TON equals connecting all social actions into an economic closed-loop link using Stars, where behind every send and receive, it is not just an expression of emotions but also an asset exchange.

TON’s international expansion strategy

TON is not just aiming to build a virtual economy within Telegram, but also plans to implement this Web3 mechanism globally. According to the TON Foundation’s information, it is currently actively communicating with U.S. regulatory agencies and plans to officially launch a self-custody wallet in the U.S. in Q2 2025. Behind this is a significant move, as top U.S. investment institutions like Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, and Benchmark hold over $400 million in Toncoin, indicating that TON is not just a pastime, but is directly confronting traditional finance and aggressively entering the global compliance market. As early as 2023, TON began its expansion from Africa, gradually advancing into the Middle East, Europe, and Asia-Pacific markets. This is not only about increasing user numbers but also about laying the groundwork for regulatory compliance.

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Summary

From gifting to NFTs, to using Stars to connect the social economy, and then to global regulatory advancements, TON’s strategy is not about single-point breakthroughs, but rather a comprehensive layout blooming from products, infrastructure, regulation, community, and economic systems. Rather than saying TON is a chain, it is more accurate to say it is the closest existence to an App Store in the Web3 world, except its entry point is Telegram, which is used daily.