On October 22 at 16:00 UTC, the Telegram account on X asked long-time TON users to leave their Telegram username in the replies. Five minutes later, transfers of 1 Gram each began to be sent from a single wallet. By the morning of October 23, there were 102 such transfers, to 102 different addresses. Nine days earlier, the same scheme had already been used, with 0.5 Gram distributed then.
What Telegram Posted
The full text of the post in English was: «if you're a long-time TON trencher, drop your telegram username in the replies». In crypto slang, a trencher refers to someone who has been in the market's 'trenches' for a long time. The post did not specify any conditions, deadlines, or promises of rewards.
By 19:45 UTC on October 23, the post had 5125 replies and approximately 366 thousand views. Most replies looked similar: a username via @ or a link like t.me/name.
How the Transfers Work
The sender is Telegram's built-in wallet itself, the one that opens directly in the app, not a third-party wallet like Tonkeeper or MyTonWallet. This is evident from the contract: the address is deployed as WalletTg, the type Telegram assigns to users of its wallet.
The built-in wallet can send coins not to an address, but to a username. In the open TDLib scheme, Telegram's client library, the recipient can be specified in this way. The client finds the user by name and requests their wallet address. If the user does not yet have a wallet, the createUserTonWallet method creates one for a regular user, provided the sender has a positive balance. The recipient does not need to do anything in advance.
This is clearly visible from the status of the addresses on October 23. Of the 102 recipients in the second wave, 25 already had an active wallet, while 77 had an undeployed wallet: the coin arrived at the address, but the owner had not yet used it. Most likely, these people's wallets were created at the moment of the transfer.
None of the 277 transfers had comments. The transaction fees for 20 transfers were paid by a Telegram relayer, five each on October 13, 14, 19, and 22. The server informs the client about the number of such allowed transfers via a separate setting, and judging by this address, it is five. The sender paid for the remaining 257 transfers themselves.
Who Receives
The matching of a username from a reply to a recipient's address is checked where the name has a blockchain record. This occurs with collectible usernames from Fragment. An example from the first page of replies: a user replied with a link to t.me/damx at 16:00:17. The name damx.t.me points to a Telegram built-in wallet, and it received 1 Gram at 16:08:39.
102 transfers for 5125 replies mean that about 2% of those who replied received a coin. Transfers occurred in batches of several, with breaks of up to three hours, for a total of 13 hours: from 16:05 UTC on October 22 to 05:20 UTC on October 23.
What Happened on October 13
The first post in this series was different: on October 13 at 19:15:29 UTC, the same account suggested to «reply with your telegram username and see what happens». Less than three minutes before the post, the wallet received 100.3 Gram, and 34 seconds after it, made the first transfer.
The second wave was structured similarly:
| October 13–19 | October 22–23 | |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer amount | 0.5 Gram | 1 Gram |
| Number of transfers | 175 | 102 |
| Unique recipients | 174 | 102 |
| Total distributed | 87.5 Gram | 102 Gram |
| Replies to the post | 3956 | 5125 |
Two addresses received coins in both waves, one of them being damx: the first time, the user replied at 19:31:04 and received 0.5 Gram at 19:37:26.
How people are chosen was described by the account itself on October 14 at 00:54 UTC in a reply to a commenter who asked if they were too late: «no, I'm telling grok to periodically choose random people from the replies». This cannot be verified on the blockchain, which only shows transfer times.
Where the Funds Come From and What Remains
There were two large top-ups, both from a single address with the domain check-hashtag-on-telegram.ton. On October 13, 100.32 Gram arrived, and on October 21, the day before the second post, another 87.67 Gram. Approximately 1.7 Gram more came in small transfers from other addresses. In total, 189.5 Gram has been distributed to 274 recipients.
As of 19:45 UTC on October 23, 0.075 Gram remained in the wallet. The last transfer was sent at 05:20:31 UTC on October 23.
