The biggest Telegram username sale on record is @danbao, which sold in February 2026 for 1,583,948 TON, roughly $2.6 million at today's TON price. It broke a record that @news had held since November 2022, when Telegram's Fragment auction platform launched and moved $50 million of usernames in under a month. This ranking comes from public TON blockchain records that we index continuously: every sale below is a real on-chain transaction, and every name links to its full price history.
Telegram is the only major messaging platform where usernames are openly bought and sold, on-chain, with public prices. Since late 2022, usernames there have traded as NFTs on the TON blockchain through Fragment, Telegram's official auction platform. That makes it the one social namespace where we can answer "what is a username actually worth?" with receipts instead of guesses.
We index those public blockchain records continuously at NameSniper, and this is what the top of the market looks like.
The all-time top 15
Prices are in TON, the currency every sale settles in. Dollar figures use today's TON price of about $1.65 and move with the token; dates are the on-chain transaction times. Each name links to its full recorded history.
Every price above is a settled auction sale recorded on the public TON blockchain, indexed by NameSniper and updated continuously. Coverage note: we track on-chain auction sales, so direct buy-now purchases and Telegram Stars transactions that settle differently may not appear. Sale dates reflect the on-chain transaction time of the winning bid. NameSniper is not affiliated with Telegram or Fragment. For the live version of this list, see the Telegram username market board.
The November 2022 gold rush
Almost the entire top 15 traces back to a single month. Fragment launched in late October 2022, built by a five-person team that included Pavel Durov himself, and the response was immediate: Durov reported over $50 million in username sales in less than a month, and the platform's biggest single result of that era was @news at 994,000 TON, about $1.7 million at the time.
The launch-wave buying pattern was remarkably consistent: short, generic, commercial nouns. Cars, banks, travel, games, gambling. Three of those generic nouns, @auto, @bank and @avia, cleared 800,000 TON within the first week. Russian-language names like @sber and @avia ranked alongside global English words, which fits Telegram's user base, and buyers also grabbed brand names like @meta, @nike, @amazon and @adidas at six-figure TON prices, speculative buys that come with an obvious catch we cover below.
The new record, and what @danbao says about the market
For over three years, @news looked untouchable. Then on February 7, 2026, @danbao settled at 1,583,948 TON, roughly 60% above the old record in TON terms.
The name is the tell. "Danbao" is the pinyin spelling of the Chinese word for guarantee, and in Chinese-language Telegram commerce it is the standard shorthand for escrow services that stand between buyers and sellers. The same day, @xinqun, Chinese for "new group", sold for 300,000 TON. In May 2026, @bocai, Chinese for "betting", went for 118,888 TON, a price that even ends in culturally lucky eights.
Read together, these sales point to where the market's center of gravity has moved: Chinese-speaking commerce communities that run their storefronts, group chats and escrow reputations entirely inside Telegram. For them a canonical username is business infrastructure, not a collectible.
What actually sells for the most
A few patterns hold across the whole ranking:
- Four letters dominate. Eleven of the top 15 are exactly four characters. Telegram's app will not even let you register a name under five characters, so four-letter names exist only through the auction system, and that manufactured scarcity shows up directly in the prices.
- Commerce beats vanity. The money concentrates in words that describe a business you could run through the handle: banking, gambling, news, escrow, travel. Pure status names like @king are the exception, not the rule.
- Meme liquidity is real but smaller. @doge, @devil's all-fives bid, and novelty names like @zzzzz sell well, just an order of magnitude below the commercial words.
- Brands trade with an asterisk. @meta, @nike and @amazon all sold, but owning a brand username gives you zero rights to the trademark, and using one commercially invites exactly the kind of dispute we describe in our guide to buying and selling social media handles.
Notable sales since 2025
The market never went quiet after the launch wave; it changed language. A selection of recent results from the records we index:
As of publication there are more than 6,600 username auctions live on-chain at once, so this list has a shelf life. The market board tracks auctions ending soon, recent sales and the biggest results in close to real time.
How the auctions work
The mechanics explain a lot of the prices. A Telegram username on Fragment is an NFT on the TON blockchain: whoever holds the token controls the @handle and the matching t.me/ link, and can assign it to an account, group or channel. Names enter the market either through auctions or by an owner listing them for sale, every bid is a public blockchain transaction, and settlement is automatic. There is no private negotiation to hide the numbers, which is exactly why this is the one username market anyone can audit.
That transparency cuts both ways for buyers: you can verify what a name really sold for before believing a reseller's story. If someone quotes you a price history, check the on-chain record for that name first.
Check any username's history yourself
Every name in this post links to a page with its full recorded history: every sale, every bid ladder, comparable sales and where it ranks in the market. For names that are not on the market, our Telegram username checker tells you whether the handle is taken, and whether it is sitting in an auction rather than in use.
Watching a name from this market?
NameSniper can watch any Telegram username for state changes and auction activity, and alert you the moment something moves. That is how you catch a name when it actually becomes available, instead of finding out weeks later.
Frequently asked questions
The bigger lesson in this data applies well beyond Telegram: good names are scarce, liquid and increasingly priced like assets. Telegram just happens to be the only place where the receipts are public. If a name matters to your brand anywhere else, the same logic applies, you just will not get an auction warning before someone takes it. Check the name everywhere before you commit to it, and put a watch on the ones you cannot get yet.