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

The TON Blockchain experienced a disruption in block production for a few hours on Wednesday.

Written by Radhika Parashar, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 28 August 2024 16:52 IST

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

Photo Credit: X/ @ton_blockchain

The TON blockchain team has now confirmed that the blockchain is now operational

Highlights

The TON blockchain was conceptualised by Telegram founder Pavel Durov
The TON blockchain outage lasted for six hours
The blockchain’s native coin Toncoin saw its market cap decline

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.

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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.

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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.

TON is now producing blocks normally!

We are back online. https://t.co/iXM6kF464T pic.twitter.com/FQ6eOt9fok
— TON :gem: (@ton_blockchain) August 28, 2024

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.

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Further reading: Cryptocurrency, Ton Blockchain, Toncoin, Dogs Coin, Telegram

Radhika Parashar

Email Radhika

Radhika Parashar is a senior correspondent for Gadgets 360. She has been reporting on tech and telecom for the last three years now and will be focussing on writing about all things crypto. Besides this, she is a major sitcom nerd and often replies in Chandler Bing and Michael Scott references. For tips or queries you could reach out to her at RadhikaP@ndtv.com. More