Telegram Tips and Telegram News, the official channels of Telegram, were the most subscribed channels on the messaging platform, with around 8.9 million and 6.3 million followers as of May 9, 2023. ProxyMTProto, a channel that provided proxies for Telegram, ranked third with over 6.3 million subscribers.
Selling and buying Telegram usernames
Starting from end-October 2022, Telegram allowed its users to sell and buy usernames using the auction platform Fragment that used the cryptocurrency Toncoin (TON) for payments. As of March 2023, the most expensive username sold was @news. Its price stood at 994 thousand TON, or around 2.4 million U.S. dollars based on an exchange rate of 1 TON = 2.4 U.S. dollars as of December 2022). In total as of November 30, 2022, Telegram usernames worth 50 million U.S. dollars were sold worldwide, as stated by Telegram’s owner Pavel Durov.
Most popular Telegram channels in Russia
In Russia, where Telegram originated, the most subscribed Telegram channel is Pryamoy Efir (Прямой Эфир), a private news blog. As of April 2023, it had approximately 4.5 million followers. Besides the audience, performance of Telegram channels can be measured by views, reactions, and shares. In terms of average views per post, the leading channel belonged to Vyacheslav Volodin, a Russian politician, in March 2023.
