The Telegram Open Network (TON) has faced significant disruption, remaining down for more than three hours after a surge in transactions caused by the launch of the DOGS memecoin. The outage, which began on August 28, halted new transactions and block production, sparking concerns across the network. The memecoin, DOGS, gained traction rapidly after its launch on August 27, quickly becoming available on major exchanges like Binance and OKX.
Validator Consensus Issues
The sudden rise of DOGS led to immense pressure on TON’s infrastructure, resulting in validators struggling to maintain consensus. The last confirmed transaction took place in block 45341899, after which no new blocks were produced. Tonscan, a blockchain tracker, confirmed that the network had not generated any blocks for nearly three hours, with the most recent block appearing at 06:11:46 UTC+8.
Bybit suspended deposits and withdrawals in response to the instability. The TON Foundation explained that the surge in DOGS-related transactions overloaded the network’s garbage collection processes, causing many validators to lose consensus. The foundation plans to restore consensus by calling upon validators to restart at 4:00 UTC with specific flags to address the issue.
Memecoin Hype and Market Response
DOGS quickly made an impact within its first ten hours, achieving a trading volume of $1.7 billion and reaching a market cap of $891 million. However, its price has since dropped from $0.0018 to approximately $0.0012.
French Gov Sites Hacked Following the Arrest of Telegram CEOThis event comes shortly after the TON Society rebranded on August 26, aligning with Telegram creator Pavel Durov, who was recently arrested in France. As part of the rebranding, TON introduced the “Resistance Dog” symbol and launched an “Open Letter Mini App” on Telegram, gathering over 1.48 million signatures in support of Durov’s release. However, despite these efforts, TON’s native token has dropped by 19% in the past week, trading at $5.35 at press time.
However, after all these disruptions, the network came back online, restoring transactions and block generation. Following the resumption of activity, TON’s native token has seen some recovery, with its percentage loss decreasing over the past week.
