How ‘Utility’ NFTs on TON Will Reshape the World of Digital Collectibles

NFTs burst into the mainstream as speculative art and status symbols – think multi-million dollar ape cartoons and pixel art. But the frenzy of 2021’s NFT boom has given way to something more practical in 2025.

Instead of just pricey JPEGs to flip for profit, a new breed of “utility” NFTs is emerging on Telegram’s blockchain ecosystem (powered by The Open Network, or TON) that people actually use and showcase in daily life.

These digital collectibles are woven into the Telegram experience – from profile badges to chat stickers – moving NFTs beyond hype into a realm of true user engagement and fun. In short, collecting is becoming as much about personal expression as investment.

Telegram’s massive user base (more than 1 billion) offers the perfect testing ground for this shift.

In this article, Andrew D (CEO @DOGS, CPO @sticker_bot) will talk about the prospects of the “utility” NFTs market based on TON.

Anonymous Numbers: Privacy Meets Exclusivity

One of Telegram’s boldest NFT forays was anonymous phone numbers – essentially Telegram accounts linked to NFT phone numbers rather than SIM cards. These +888… numbers were auctioned on the Fragment platform as NFTs, allowing anyone to own a number and use it to log into Telegram privately.

Beyond the privacy perk, they’ve become hot collectibles. Holders trade them on marketplaces like Getgems or Market app, and demand is such that even the most basic NFT number now sells for hundreds of TON (worth thousands of dollars) on secondary markets. In fact, over 24 million TON (around $80 million) in volume has been exchanged for Telegram’s anonymous numbers so far – a staggering figure that underlines their exclusivity.

Like limited-edition club membership cards, these NFT numbers grant bragging rights as much as utility. Owners aren’t just buying a login; they’re buying a status symbol that says they’re early adopters of Telegram’s Web3 revolution.

NFT Usernames: Owning Your Digital Identity

Telegram also introduced on-chain usernames, meaning coveted @handles can be bought and sold as TON NFTs. Your Telegram handle is no longer just a username – it’s a digital asset you control. This gives individuals and businesses a chance to secure unique identities (think @rockstar or @coffee) and truly own them outside of Telegram’s whim.

These name NFTs have real value: over 72 million TON has been spent trading Telegram usernames so far. They’re more than vanity labels – they double as wallet addresses and digital IDs across Telegram and Web3. In other words, an NFT username isn’t just for show; you can receive crypto or verify identity with it, blending personal branding with practical utility.

This convergence of identity and ownership represents exactly how TON’s utility NFTs are reshaping collectibles – by giving them function. Each name or number NFT is like a personalized license plate for your online persona, with the owner’s autonomy and uniqueness guaranteed on-chain.

Collectible Gifts: Profile Bling for Millions

Another wildly popular innovation is Telegram Gifts – special animated goodies you can send to friends or pin on your profile. Since their launch in late 2024, users have sent over 20 million of these digital gifts, from virtual roses and cakes to quirky inside-joke items. Initially, gifts were fun decorations, but Telegram’s January 2025 update unlocked the ability to “upgrade” these gifts into NFTs on TON.

Suddenly that birthday cake or “plush Pepe” gift on your profile isn’t just an animation – it can become a one-of-a-kind collectible you truly own and can trade.

The response has been immense. When Telegram released a set of nine Valentine’s Day gift collectibles, all sold out within hours, racking up over $5 million in sales. Some of those gifts (like limited heart or ring icons) were gone in minutes, as users rushed to snag a piece of Telegram history.

Even Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, revealed he’s collected thousands of NFT gifts on his account – a testament to how engaging these collectibles are. By turning profile decorations into tradable NFTs, Telegram made social media bling into a new kind of asset class. It’s not about an investment hype cycle; it’s about millions of everyday users swapping fun digital mementos that also happen to live on a blockchain.

Limited Stickers: The New Flex in Your Chats

Stickers have long been integral to Telegram’s culture – users share over 500 billion stickers each month in chats. Now stickers themselves are getting the limited status, combining Telegram’s massive sticker habit with blockchain scarcity. In late 2024, a community developer team (TON’s Open Builders, alongside the DOGS) launched the Sticker Store, a Telegram mini-app where users can buy limited-edition sticker packs.

Unlike typical stickers available to anyone, these come in capped quantities – for example, only a few hundred or thousand of each design – making them collectible. You purchase them with Telegram Stars (the in-app currency tied to Toncoin) and can then use the stickers in chats like any other.

The twist is you own them: you can trade these stickers on marketplaces, and since each series is limited, a real aftermarket is thriving.

The Sticker Store’s launch lineup reads like a who’s who of digital brands. Collections from popular NFT communities and games jumped onboard – Pudgy Penguins, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Flappy Bird, and others had sticker packs at launch. Soon after, collaborations like Pudgy Penguins x Baby Shark saw 888 stickers sell out in seconds, and new drops from projects like Doodles, Pucca, and even the Baby Shark kids’ franchise have been announced. In every case, fans are eager to grab their favorite characters as Telegram-native collectibles.

“Tokenized stickers are the new mass adoption meta,” proclaimed Open Builders founder Sasha Plotvinov – highlighting that this fusion of familiar fun (stickers) with Web3 tech could onboard the next wave of users.

After all, sending a rare sticker in a chat is a lot more interactive than just staring at an NFT in a crypto wallet. By making stickers ownable and sellable, Telegram and TON have turned a casual form of expression into a vibrant collectibles economy. Creators benefit too – with royalties on sales it offers artists a new revenue stream for their work. It’s a win-win that shows how utility NFTs can blend into social platforms.

Digital Collectibles: The New Vanity Plates

Why are people willing to pay a premium for a particular username, number, or sticker? For the same reason someone might pay millions for a custom car license plate – identity, exclusivity, and flex. In the physical world, rare license plates have fetched jaw-dropping sums (Dubai’s plate “P-7” sold for nearly $15 million at auction) simply because owning “P-7” makes a statement.

Telegram’s NFT collectibles tap into that same desire for personal expression. Owning the short handle @CEO or a rare 2-digit phone number is like having a coveted vanity plate or a verified badge – it sets you apart in a very public way.

The difference is that until now, digital flexing was limited. You could spend a fortune on an NFT artwork or an exclusive in-game skin, but showing it off to friends or a broader audience was clunky. Outside of niche crypto circles, few would ever see that you owned a rare NFT – your prized collectible might as well sit in a gallery no one visits.

Telegram + TON solve this by baking NFT collectibles into a social platform where your contacts can see and appreciate them every day. Your NFT username appears whenever you chat or get added to a group. Your NFT gifts adorn your profile for all your contacts to admire. Your limited stickers pop into conversations, wowing friends who might ask, “Whoa, where’d you get that sticker?”.

In essence, Telegram has made NFTs social. As one TON developer put it, legacy NFTs “never had the capacity for a seamless connection with mass users like Telegram has”. Now, digital collectibles function like wearable badges of identity in our online interactions – as intuitive and visible as a fancy watch or a custom gamer tag, not tucked away behind crypto wallet addresses.

From Telegram to the World: A New Model for Collectibles

What’s happening on Telegram is a glimpse into how digital collectibles could evolve across the tech landscape. By focusing on utility and integration over hype, Telegram has turned NFTs into something that ordinary users can interact with and care about. This model – integrating blockchain assets into a mainstream app – could easily extend to other platforms and communities.

We might soon see other messaging apps, games, or social networks following suit, embedding collectible items that users can truly own. Brands are already taking note: the fact that names like Pudgy Penguins and Baby Shark are releasing Telegram stickers shows that even established IPs see value in this crossover. It’s easy to imagine a sports league issuing collectible chat emojis for fans, or a music app where album stickers are tradeable fan memorabilia.

Crucially, TON’s approach keeps the user experience smooth. Buying a sticker with Telegram’s Stars or nabbing a username on Fragment is far easier than dealing with Metamask and gas fees on Ethereum – the blockchain part is under the hood, not a barrier to entry. This is how Web3 reaches the masses: by blending into the apps people already love.

Telegram’s foray into utility NFTs is demonstrating that digital collectibles can be both fun and functional, speculative and social. The world of digital collectibles is being reshaped before our eyes, with Telegram and TON leading the charge. And as this experiment blossoms – with daily-use NFTs becoming status symbols and community artifacts – it’s likely only the beginning.

What starts on Telegram won’t stay on Telegram. The success of these utility NFTs is a signal to the wider tech world that collectibles 2.0 are here to stay, and they’re about to go truly mainstream.

In the end, the humble Telegram sticker or gift may go down in history as the catalyst that moved NFTs from niche crypto toys to an everyday feature of online life. Digital collectibles are growing up, and they’re doing it on TON – one chat at a time.