On August 14, 2025, Telegram celebrated its 12th anniversary with the launch of a special NFT collection. The digital items, including "Durov's Sunglasses," "Dog of Resilience," "Sandcastle," "Surfboard," and "Pink Flamingo," sold out in less than three minutes, generating $11 million. These NFTs were available on Telegram's internal trading platform and transacted using Toncoin. In July 2025, Telegram announced a new NFT category exclusively for Premium subscribers, featuring items like "Durov's Cups" and "Dogs of Resilience," which sold out in 15 seconds.
Telegram's engagement with blockchain technology began in December 2024 with an NFT sticker shop on the TON blockchain, allowing users to buy, trade, and collect digital stickers. The TON ecosystem has seen significant growth in the NFT space, with TON leading in daily NFT trading volume in June 2025, at times surpassing Ethereum. Daily collectible gift volumes ranged from $3 million to $9 million between June 7 and June 9, 2025. This surge is partly attributed to Telegram's collectible gifts feature, which enables users to display, trade, and auction these digital items on NFT marketplaces. The success of celebrity-driven drops, such as Snoop Dogg's collection in July 2025 which generated $12 million in sales within 30 minutes, highlights the increasing consumer demand for digital collectibles linked to influential figures. This event alone contributed to a 7.75% increase in global NFT sales volume, underscoring Telegram's role in popularizing social NFTs.