CEO Durov spent $200,000 to buy Toncoin in order to pre-acquire Telegram Premium subscriptions in a giveaway for 10,000 Telegram users.
Pavel Durov, the CEO of cross-platform instant messaging service has announced a giveaway of 10,000 Premium subscriptions to celebrate a new feature in the app. The Telegram app officially introduced a few new features, including the “Giveaways in Channels”, which allows channel owners to host giveaways for loyal followers.
Durov wrote that every channel on Telegram can now host “FAIR giveaways”. He explained that the problem with previous giveaways on social media is that many of them are scams. The CEO pointed out that in most cases, it was impossible to confirm that the winner was chosen fairly. Telegram’s new feature makes the app the first social media platform to “natively support giveaways with guaranteed random selection”. The giveaway feature also includes prepaid prize funds.
In celebration of the new features, Durov announced free Telegram Premium subscriptions paid for with Toncoin. He wrote:
“To celebrate our new feature, I’m hosting a giveaway of 10,000 Telegram Premium subscriptions. In a week, 10,000 random subscribers of my channel will receive a Telegram Premium subscription for 6 months. I have already already prepaid for this giveaway on Fragment with $200,000 worth of Toncoin I bought on a crypto exchange.”
The new feature allows users to join giveaways and receive prizes, rest assured that winners are fairly chosen. Each winner will receive a gift code to publicly verify their win. In addition to accessing Telegram Premium via the code, users may be able to access other gifts as introduced by the owner of the channel. Winners may also be able to transfer their prize to a friend.
Telegram Giveaway Feature and Boosts
The advantage to the channel owners is the boosts they earn from giveaways. These boosts help them access more features, including custom colors and stories, and also add to their overall growth and visibility. Also, channel owners are in complete control of the giveaways. They can specify the preferred number of winners, giveaway duration, and what qualifies for eligibility. Owners can also specify other conditions, including whether or not they want eligibility to all subscribers, or restrict access to new subscribers.
To protect participants and winners, the channel owner must pay in advance for the Premium subscriptions they intend to award. While this is easily done via the Telegram app, organizers can use the @PremiumBot or Fragment, which supports large giveaways for thousands of subscriptions.
In addition, boosts are now a lot more accessible. Telegram Premium account holders will now get four boosts instead of one. Users are free to share these boosts among their favorite channels as they prefer.
Furthermore, gifting someone a Premium subscription also gives them one boost. Interestingly, the gifter then receives three boosts for simply giving away a Premium. Any user who wins a Premium in a giveaway will automatically have their four boosts transferred to the channel host. This contributes significantly to the growth of the channel and increases its visibility.
Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge.
When he’s not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.