Telegram-Linked TON Blockchain Back Online After Hours-Long Outage: Here's What Happened

The Open Network (TON) — the Telegram-linked blockchain network — experienced a technical issue in the early hours of Wednesday that saw the network go offline, prompting exchanges like Bybit and Binance to halt deposits and withdrawals on the network during the time. It appeared that the blockchain was undergoing a network-wide outage before its developers disclosed the reason for the downtime and restored the network. The TON blockchain remained offline for a few hours, before it resumed block production.

TON Network Downtime: What Caused the Outage

The TON blockchain stopped processing transactions for a notable time period on Wednesday. Several crypto and blockchain enthusiasts shared screenshots showing that the blockchain was not creating 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 heightened trading activity around the newly launched memecoin – Dogs. The Dogs Coin is part of a new game on the Mini Apps marketplace on Telegram, named Dogs. The game lets Telegram users play on the app and collect Dogs Coin. The ecosystem of the Dogs memecoin is supported on the Ton blockchain.

On August 26, the Dogs Coin was listed on Binance and other crypto exchanges – after which transactions around this memecoin quickly picked pace. Users who collected Dogs Coin by playing its game on Telegram rushed to the market to trade and sell.

“Due to high recent activity (>20 million transactions in recent two days), garbage collection overloaded many of validators for enough time for them to 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 needed to be restarted at about the same time with specific flags.

As a precautionary measure, Binance and ByBit reportedly suspended deposits and withdrawals to and from the network. It is currently unclear whether the TON blockchain-related services are restored on these exchanges.

Meanwhile, the TON blockchain was restored a few hours ago and is back online, while block production has resumed.

It was previously reported that TON's native crypto token Toncoin lost about $2.7 billion (roughly Rs. 22,670 crore) in market value following Telegram founder Pavel Durov's detention in France.

While 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 its co-founders around 2019 but it reportedly launched on a wider scale in 2022.