In the previous edition, “Five Months of Telegram Development: New Prospects for the Username Market”, we took a detailed look at Telegram’s application to create its own global top-level domain, .gram, and the potential implications of its launch for the collectible username market.
At the time, the main uncertainty was whether ICANN would approve Telegram’s application and how future second-level domains might be linked to the existing Telegram username system.
Now another significant factor has emerged: another applicant — Link Freedom Group — is seeking the same .gram string.
This means Telegram will not only have to go through the standard procedures of ICANN’s new application round, but may also have to compete for the right to operate the domain zone itself.
Who Is Telegram’s Competitor?
Link Freedom Group (LFG) is a company operating in the domain infrastructure and new top-level domain market.
It was built around Nova Registry, the operator of the existing .link top-level domain.
In ICANN’s new 2026 round, LFG adopted a large-scale portfolio strategy and publicly announced that it had submitted more than 300 applications for new top-level domains. According to the company itself, participation in the current round has already required tens of millions of dollars in investment.
In other words, this is a professional participant in the domain market for which new top-level domains represent a standalone line of business.
Among the applications disclosed by LFG is .gram.
The company views this string not as part of the Telegram ecosystem, but as a standalone universal word.
.gram could potentially be used in a wide range of constructions — from a direct association with the unit of measurement gram to word combinations and domain hacks, where the domain extension itself becomes part of the word.
For example:
dia.gram
photo.gram
For LFG, .gram is one of the potentially commercially attractive domain zones within a large portfolio.
For Telegram, the value of .gram is entirely different.
Why .gram Is Especially Important for Telegram
On August 18, Pavel Durov publicly announced that Telegram had applied for .gram.
The proposed model looks like this:
@durov → durov.gram
@monk → monk.gram
According to Durov, if Telegram secures the domain zone, around one billion Telegram users could potentially receive their own second-level domains and create interactive websites hosted by Telegram using an ordinary text prompt to AI.
In other words, Telegram’s existing username system could potentially extend into the global Domain Name System (DNS).
This is a fundamentally important point.
Today, a Telegram username primarily functions within the Telegram ecosystem.
If the owner of a name can also obtain the corresponding .gram domain, the same identifier could potentially serve simultaneously as:
— the name of an account, channel, or bot;
— an address within Telegram;
— a digital asset;
— a full-fledged internet domain;
— the address of a website or interactive page.
This is why .gram may have strategic value for Telegram far beyond the conventional economics of selling domain registrations.
This is no longer simply about a new domain product, but about potentially extending Telegram’s entire system of digital names beyond the messenger itself.
Two Applicants Do Not Yet Mean an Officially Confirmed Conflict
Here it is important to distinguish between what is already known and what ICANN still needs to confirm officially.
Telegram has publicly stated that it submitted an application for .gram.
Link Freedom Group also disclosed .gram in advance as part of its portfolio of proposed new top-level domains, while the industry publication Domain Name Wire separately drew attention to the fact that two applicants are seeking the same string.
However, ICANN has not yet published the official list of applications that have passed administrative review.
This will happen on Reveal Day. At that point, ICANN will publish the applications that have passed the initial administrative review, the applied-for and replacement strings, as well as the initial contention sets — groups of competing applications for the same domain string.
As of September 6, 2026, the exact date of Reveal Day has not yet been announced.
ICANN says it intends to announce the date in mid-September. Barring extraordinary circumstances, Reveal Day must take place no later than nine weeks after the application window closed on August 12 — meaning no later than October 14, 2026.
Therefore, the most accurate way to describe the situation today is:
the existence of two publicly disclosed applicants for .gram has been confirmed, but the official status of their competition still needs to be established by ICANN. The exact Reveal Day date should become known in the coming weeks, and by mid-October at the latest we should see the official configuration of the battle for .gram.
Applicants Will Still Have the Option to Switch to a Replacement String
Even if Telegram and LFG end up in the same contention set after Reveal Day, this does not necessarily mean the matter will proceed to an auction.
Reveal Day will be followed by a special 14-day Replacement Period.
If an applicant specified an eligible replacement string when submitting its original application, it will be able to give up the original string in favor of the replacement during this period.
The decision is final: once an applicant switches to a replacement string, it cannot return to the original one.
For example, if LFG included an alternative to .gram in its application and decides to use it, the direct competition could disappear before the process moves any further.
The same theoretically applies to Telegram.
This is why Reveal Day will be important not only because it confirms the identities of the applicants.
We will also be able to see what alternatives the participants prepared in advance and whether there is a straightforward way to avoid competing specifically for .gram.
You Cannot Simply Reach an Agreement and “Buy Out” the Competitor
There is another fundamental difference between the 2026 round and the previous major new top-level domain round in 2012.
In the past, competing applicants could resolve such conflicts among themselves: they could conduct private auctions, create joint arrangements, or compensate one participant for withdrawing from the contested string.
ICANN now explicitly prohibits this.
Private resolution of contention between competing applicants is prohibited under the rules of the current round. The ban covers private auctions, agreements providing compensation for withdrawing or modifying an application, joint ventures, and other arrangements designed to eliminate competition outside ICANN’s procedures.
Moreover, starting on Reveal Day, applicants within the same contention set will face restrictions on directly or indirectly discussing strategies for resolving the conflict with one another.
So the simple scenario in which:
Telegram pays LFG to withdraw from .gram
is not a permitted way to resolve the issue.
If both participants keep their applications, the conflict must be resolved through ICANN’s procedures.
If Both Remain: Who Is Financially Stronger, and How Could the Battle End?
If two eligible applicants remain for .gram after all intermediate stages, one of the final mechanisms for resolving the conflict could be an ICANN New gTLD Auction.
The auction is a mechanism of last resort: it is held if contention has not been resolved during the previous stages and multiple applications are still competing for the same string.
The current round uses an ascending-clock auction with a second-price principle.
Participants continue bidding as the price rises. The winner is the applicant willing to remain in the auction longer than the others, but the winner does not necessarily pay its own maximum bid — the final amount is determined by the level of the second-highest bid.
But in the case of .gram, another question is far more interesting:
how comparable are the financial resources of Telegram and Link Freedom Group?
Based on publicly available information, they do not appear to be equal in terms of overall financial scale.
LFG is a serious specialized participant in the domain market. The company disclosed more than 300 proposed domain strings and says it has invested tens of millions of dollars in applications. Domain Name Wire has also noted that, with the base application fee at around $227,000, the total investment indeed reaches tens of millions even before any potential future auctions.
This alone shows that LFG should not be regarded as a nominal competitor that submitted a random application without the resources to continue competing.
However, there is no public information on the size of LFG’s cash reserves, available credit facilities, or maximum budget specifically allocated to auctions. Its true financial limit therefore cannot currently be determined.
Telegram operates on a substantially larger scale, and its financial position is more visible through publicly available data.
According to the Financial Times, Telegram’s revenue reached approximately $1.4 billion in 2024, with profit of around $540 million. At the time, the company held approximately $530 million in cash.
In addition, in May 2025 Telegram issued $1.7 billion in five-year convertible bonds. Around $955 million was used to refinance existing debt, while approximately $745 million represented newly raised financing.
In other words, based on publicly verifiable data, Telegram appears to be a substantially larger financial player with broader access to capital.
But the size of the wallet alone is not enough to predict the outcome.
For LFG, .gram is one asset within a portfolio of hundreds of domain applications. At a certain price, the company will have to compare the potential return from .gram with dozens or hundreds of other opportunities to which the same capital could be allocated.
Telegram is in a different position.
.gram could potentially become part of the platform’s entire digital identity system:
@name → name.gram
Telegram may therefore value the domain zone not only through the direct revenue generated by domain registrations, but also through its impact on the user ecosystem, usernames, websites, business tools, and the platform’s continued development.
This could potentially allow Telegram to economically justify a substantially higher price for .gram than a conventional portfolio domain operator.
The specific bidding limits of both sides are unknown today, and any figures would be speculation.
But the overall balance of power based on publicly available information appears fairly clear:
LFG is a serious, professional, and well-funded competitor, but Telegram significantly exceeds it in terms of known business scale, cash flow, and ability to raise large amounts of external financing.
Therefore, if the dispute ultimately reaches a purely financial auction, and if .gram has the strategic value for Telegram implied by Pavel Durov’s announcement, Telegram currently appears to be the stronger side.
The main uncertainty is no longer whether Telegram is capable of paying a substantial amount.
The main question is where LFG’s financial limit lies and what maximum price Telegram itself considers reasonable for the right to control .gram.
What All of This Means for the Telegram Username Market
For the collectible username market, the emergence of a second applicant cannot be interpreted unequivocally as either good or bad news.
On the one hand, there is now additional uncertainty.
It is no longer enough for Telegram simply to pass through ICANN’s standard process successfully: it must first secure the right to the .gram string itself.
On the other hand, the potential value of strong Telegram usernames in the event of a successful .gram launch has not disappeared.
And this makes the quality of the individual username especially important.
If the model described by Durov is actually implemented, names that work naturally both as Telegram usernames and as full-fledged internet domains may become particularly interesting:
@travel → travel.gram
@music → music.gram
@hotel → hotel.gram
@games → games.gram
@lawyer → lawyer.gram
For such names, an obvious additional use case emerges beyond Telegram itself.
This is no longer simply an attractive or rare identifier inside a messenger.
Potentially, it is also a full-fledged address on the global internet.
A rare username whose value exists primarily within Telegram culture and which does not work naturally as a standalone domain, by contrast, may receive a significantly smaller additional benefit from .gram.
A successful .gram launch is therefore unlikely to lead to an equal revaluation of the entire market.
Instead, it could further increase the separation of usernames by quality, versatility, and practical applicability.
For strong dictionary words, commercial terms, geographical names, and brand-oriented names, an additional valuation criterion would emerge:
how well the name works not only as @username, but also as username.gram.
What We Are Watching Next
The next truly important milestone is ICANN Reveal Day.
The organization is expected to announce the exact date in mid-September, while Reveal Day itself is expected to take place no later than October 14, 2026.
After that, we should get answers to several questions at once:
— whether both .gram applications are officially confirmed;
— whether Telegram and LFG are indeed placed in the same contention set;
— what replacement strings the applicants have specified;
— whether each participant keeps .gram after the 14-day Replacement Period;
— and whether direct contention remains after the selected strings are finally confirmed.
Only after that will it be possible to assess much more accurately the probability that .gram will actually become part of the Telegram ecosystem.
Conclusion
The emergence of Link Freedom Group does not diminish the potential significance of .gram, but it makes Telegram’s path to the domain zone considerably more interesting and more complex.
This is no longer only about the technical and regulatory approval of a new domain zone.
Telegram may now have to compete for the string itself against a professional domain operator with the experience, specialization, and financial resources required to participate in a serious contest.
At the same time, based on the information currently available, Telegram appears to be the financially stronger side, while the strategic value of .gram to its ecosystem could potentially be substantially higher.
For the username market, the conclusion remains cautious:
the .gram scenario is extremely interesting, but it is still too early to treat it as a fait accompli.
The next few weeks should bring considerably more clarity.
First, we are waiting for ICANN to announce the exact date of Reveal Day.
Then — the list of applicants itself and the final configuration of the battle for .gram.
And after that, we will definitely return to the subject in the next edition of Market Spotlight.
For now, however, we are clearly not neutral observers here.
We will be rooting for Pavel and Telegram, keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that the battle for .gram ends in their favor. It would be great to one day see the Telegram usernames we are already familiar with in a new format — name.gram.
