Weekly News Digest for May 19-25, 2025
▪️ DeDust has distributed staking rewards.
▪️ In the DAOLama app, users can now buy Telegram Stars and Premium with TON without KYC, with USDT payment support coming soon.
▪️ The market capitalization of the Telegram secondary gift market has exceeded $50 million for the first time, nearly doubling in recent weeks amid increased transactions and positive news.
▪️ Pavel Durov has changed his channel name to Pavel Durov.
▪️ Pavel Durov refused to restrict conservative voices in Romania at the request of a Western European government, stating that Telegram does not violate freedom of speech.
▪️ Tonnel has been updated: users can now see the floor price of gifts and the total number of gifts listed for sale.
▪️ According to Max Crown, TON Foundation had a busy April, with even more work ahead including expansion into the US and launching new products.
▪️ Tact v1.6.10 was released with TVM v10 support, adding new currencies, removing anycast and variable addresses, plus important fixes and stability improvements.
▪️ Illusionist Felix Bodden, one of Instagram’s brightest magicians, started receiving gifts on Telegram and immediately showed them off on X.
▪️ A referral system launched in the swap.coffee ambassador program: invite new participants via your link and earn 10% of their rewards until the end of May.
▪️ TON DNS owners can now create and sell their own collections of third-level subdomains directly on Getgems, earning royalties from each sale.
▪️ MRKT received an update: the catalog now works faster, filters and sorting are more user-friendly, and the interface is more pleasant.
▪️ Split.tg became an official partner of Palace: anyone who buys a sticker via Split’s referral link will receive a small gift signed by Palace directly in Telegram.
▪️ French authorities denied Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder, permission to travel to the US for talks with investment funds.
▪️ Marketapp released an update that alerts traders if prices are too low and helps prevent accidental NFT sales with a balance.
▪️ Pavel Durov announced he will try to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum next week by invitation of the Human Rights Foundation and Thor Halvorssen.
▪️ Freeman released a public version of zk2fa technology, allowing TON wallets to be protected via Google Authenticator without centralized servers, using ZK and TON.
▪️ Telegram posted a profit of $540 million for the first time, despite Pavel Durov facing serious legal issues in France.
▪️ Telegram plans to increase revenue to $2 billion and profit to $720 million in 2025, and is considering an IPO if market conditions are favorable.
▪️ Telegram is testing a “Paid Post Suggestion” feature allowing users to suggest posts to channels for stars (from 1 to 10,000), with all proposals sent to a separate “Monoforum” chat where admins can respond, see who proposed the post, and receive stars to the channel balance.
▪️ In the new Telegram beta for iOS, groups with topics can now display topics as a list or tabs.
▪️ Not Pixel conducted its 18th buyback, purchasing another 1,000,000 PX and bringing the total tokens bought back to 23,000,000 PX.
▪️ EVAA added stablecoins USDe and tsUSDe to the main pool, enabling users to easily store and grow dollar savings via Ethena — one of the fastest-growing Web3 projects with over $6 billion TVL.
▪️ Vietnamese authorities ordered the blocking of Telegram messenger due to refusal to cooperate with law enforcement in combating user crimes.
▪️ Chorus One launched TON Pool — the first institutional scalable platform for Toncoin staking with a low entry threshold and simplified management, designed for wallets, exchanges, and custodians.
▪️ From May 23 to June 23, all fees on sales, offers, and auctions in Telegram Gifts collections on Getgems are waived.
▪️ MRKT started a 10-day leaderboard: the top 100 participants will receive rewards for uploading unique gifts from 9 collections.
▪️ The long-awaited TON FEST festival has started on Telegram: free entry, with tickets required to participate in partner activities and prize draws.
▪️ Pavel Durov reported growing popularity of Telegram and declining popularity of Meta apps (WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook) in Q1 2025.
▪️ The volume of transactions on the Tonnel platform exceeded 8 million TON despite a slowdown after the May hype and ongoing, though small, refunds.
▪️ A French court rejected Pavel Durov’s request to visit Norway to speak at a 2025 conference.
▪️ A collection of four Plush Pepe Ninja Turtle NFTs was sold on Telegram’s platform for $23,000.
▪️ Tonnel has launched a pre-sale system for NFT gifts (Pre-market) requiring a 20% deposit from sellers, which is refunded after the sale.
▪️ The MRKT platform has introduced a system of rating badges for giveaway channels, providing bonuses for activity and quality of giveaways.
▪️ Japanese company Metaplanet purchased an additional 1,004 BTC, now holding 7,800 BTC ($803 million).
▪️ Argentina’s federal court froze assets of key participants in the LIBRA scam scheme.
▪️ A class-action lawsuit was filed against crypto exchange Coinbase for collecting biometric data without consent.
▪️ The Russian Ministry of Justice drafted a bill regulating the arrest and confiscation of digital currency.
▪️ Digital bank Revolut is investing $1.1 billion in France’s economy and will apply for a banking license.
▪️ A class-action lawsuit was filed against Michael Saylor’s Strategy company, alleging misleading statements about its Bitcoin strategy.
▪️ Argentina’s President Milei disbanded the unit investigating the LIBRA incident.
▪️ Binance asked the court to dismiss FTX’s $1.76 billion lawsuit, calling it “legally baseless.”
▪️ Societe Generale bank will launch a dollar-pegged stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain.
▪️ Tether minted 2,000,000,000 USDT.
▪️ Texas passed a law establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
▪️ The digital ruble (CBDC) will undergo anti-money laundering checks.
▪️ Kraken exchange will allow users to trade tokenized versions of popular US stocks like Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia, available 24/7 on the Solana blockchain.