Telegram Gifts

Telegram Gifts are digital collectible gifts inside Telegram, purchased with the platform’s internal currency Telegram Stars and, when upgraded, minted as NFTs on the TON blockchain. Launched in 2024, gifts have grown from «a cute mechanic between friends» into a fully-fledged market with multi-million-dollar weekly turnover and its own marketplace and analytics infrastructure.

How gifts work

Two tiers coexist in Telegram:

• Star Gifts (regular) — an icon plus animation, capped supply of tens of thousands to a few million per drop. Bought with Stars, displayed in the recipient’s profile.
• Upgraded Gifts — every regular gift can be upgraded once for additional Stars. After the upgrade, the gift becomes a unique NFT on TON with three randomly rolled attributes: model, backdrop, symbol. Each combination has its own rarity percentage.

It is the upgraded gifts that form the secondary market: they can be transferred, withdrawn to a TON wallet, and sold on marketplaces.

Rarity attributes

Every upgraded gift carries three attributes, each weighted within the collection:

• Model — appearance (a «Plush Pepe» gift might roll a regular, gold, or silver model, with very different weights).
• Backdrop — card background; collections often have 30+ backdrops with weights ranging from 0.1% to 5%.
• Symbol — a decorative pattern overlaid on the gift artwork.
• Mint number — sequence in the collection; low-numbered mints (#1–100) usually trade at a premium.

«Grails» are rare attribute combinations (e.g. a 0.5% model paired with a 0.3% backdrop). Such pieces can trade at orders of magnitude above the collection floor.

Where they are traded

In 2026 the three primary marketplaces are:

• Portals — Telegram-native, deepest liquidity, tightest spreads. See Portals glossary.
• Tonnel — the oldest marketplace, lowest fees, strong floor analytics. See Tonnel.
• MRKT — a fast-growing challenger focused on UX and attribute filtering. See MRKT.

Some gifts also surface on the classic NFT marketplace Getgems after being withdrawn onto a TON address.

What you can do with an upgraded gift

• Hold it inside Telegram or transfer it to a TON wallet (Tonkeeper, MyTonWallet).
• Sell it on a marketplace for TON or USDT.
• Gift it to another Telegram user (free, no fee).
• Use it as collateral for a TON loan on DAOLama — if the collection is whitelisted, you can borrow TON without giving up ownership.

Risks

• High volatility. Floor prices of popular collections can drop 50–80% in a week on a trend shift or large unlock.
• Low liquidity on rare attributes. A grail might be «worth» $5000+, but selling it fast at that price is rarely possible — the bid side is thin.
• Telegram is a centralised platform. Telegram can change upgrade rules, Stars taxation, or withdrawal fees at any time. This is a service, not an on-chain protocol.
• Fake marketplace scams. Phishing bots clone Portals/Tonnel UI and steal gifts via malicious signatures. Always verify the brand against ton.app.

Where to follow releases

Telegram drops new gift collections in waves — around holidays, platform anniversaries, or ad-hoc events. The community-favourite changelog channel is @GiftChanges, which tracks announcements, supply caps, release timing and rolled rarities right after the drop.

Gifts remain a relatively young part of the TON ecosystem, but already one of the most liquid: on peak days the secondary market turnover exceeds the volume of the entire TON NFT sector.