Here's basically how it works: you submit the username on our form in hoton.tg (live soon), transfer the channel/group to our Hoton account (powered by Teleton), place the first bid, that’s all.

The moment your bid lands, ownership is automatically transferred back to you. That transfer is the only manual step; everything else runs on its own.

Why the transfer? Minting a Telegram username needs temporary full ownership of the channel/group it lives on, which is also why personal account usernames aren't supported yet (more complicated + security concerns). Will see if that can be integrated in the future.

If you miss the bid window, your channel/group still comes back automatically. But re-submitting that same username costs a small penalty fee, this is just to prevent people from spamming the system.

So if you've got a username you want to convert, get ready:

- The username must be on a channel/group for 14+ days
- 2FA must be enabled & unchanged for the last 7 days
- At least 10 $GRAM in your wallet (10 for the bid + gas fee)

This will be free for a while when it goes live, then we may introduce a fee later in the future for the service.