TON resumes operations after traffic surge from $550M DOGS airdrop disrupts network

The Open Network (TON), the blockchain network linked to Telegram, has resumed operations following a significant outage that lasted nearly six hours due to a spike in network traffic.

In an Aug. 28 post on X, TON confirmed it was back online and producing blocks as usual.

Some community members speculated that the outage might be linked to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov‘s recent arrest in France.

On Aug. 21, Durov was arrested in Paris and was charged with facilitating illegal transactions, refusing to cooperate with law enforcement, and allowing various unlawful activities to occur on the social messaging application.

However, the head of TON Ventures, Ian Wittkopp, clarified that the outage was caused by the high volume of transactions from airdropping over $550 million in value to the community through the DOGS memecoin token issuance. He added that this might have been TON’s highest day of active users.

DOGS is a memecoin associated with the Telegram community. The project, launched on Aug. 26, attracted significant attention due to its unique airdrop approach. On Aug. 27, blockchain explorer Tonscan reported that the memecoin had generated substantial traffic, which caused some “central services” to be temporarily suspended.

TON corroborated this and explained that the network had seen abnormal load activity, which overwhelmed several validators and prevented them from clearing old transactions. This resulted in a loss of consensus.

On Telegram, TON stated:

“Due to high recent activity (>20m transactions in recent 2 days), garbage collection overloaded many of validators for enough time for them to lost consensus with each other.”

In blockchain networks, validators verify transactions within blocks. When block production stops, transactions go unconfirmed, causing service disruptions.

Despite the significant outage, the TON’s network token price defied the broader market trend, losing a mild 1.3% over the past 24 hours while other major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped by an average of 6% during the same period.

Meanwhile, some crypto community members saw the outage as a positive sign for TON, likening it to previous outages on other significant blockchains like Solana and Avalanche. They argued that such disruptions on layer-1 networks often signal high adoption.

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