The Open Network (TON) — the blockchain network associated with Telegram — experienced a technical issue in the early hours of Wednesday that took the network offline, prompting exchanges like Bybit and Binance to halt deposits and withdrawals on the network. The blockchain appeared to experience a network-wide outage before developers announced the reason for the downtime and restored the network. The TON blockchain remained offline for several hours before block production resumed.
TON Network Outage: What Caused the Outage?
The TON blockchain stopped processing transactions for a notable period on Wednesday. Several crypto and blockchain enthusiasts shared screenshots which shows that the blockchain did not create any new blocks. The observers also noted that it took up to six hours for the TON blockchain to be up and running again.
The reason why this glitch occurred is the increased trading activity around the recently launched memecoin – Dogs. The Dogs Coin is part of a new game on the Mini Apps marketplace on Telegram, called Dogs. The game lets Telegram users play on the app and collect Dogs Coin. The Dogs memecoin ecosystem is supported on the Ton blockchain.
On August 26, Dogs Coin was listed on Binance and other crypto exchanges, after which the transactions around this memecoin increased rapidly. Users who collected Dogs Coin by playing the game on Telegram rushed to the market to trade and sell.
“Due to the high recent activity (>20 million transactions in the past two days), garbage collection has overloaded many validators for so long that they lost consensus with each other,” the update shared by the Ton blockchain claimed.
To resolve the situation and restore consensus, the validators of this blockchain had to be rebooted at approximately the same time with specific flags.
As a precaution, Binance and ByBit have reportedly suspended deposits and withdrawals to and from the network. It is currently unclear whether TON blockchain-related services will be restored on these exchanges.
Meanwhile, the TON blockchain has been restored and back online a few hours ago, with block production resuming.
It was previously reported that TON’s crypto token, Toncoin, lost around $2.7 billion (approximately Rs 22,670 crore) in market value after Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France.
Although the TON Foundation is a separate entity from Telegram, it is the brainchild of Durov and his brother, Nikolai Durov. The network was conceived by the co-founders around 2019, but it reportedly launched on a larger scale in 2022.
