Ton blockchain experienced 7 hours outage due to Dogs Airdrop

The Ton blockchain is finally back online after the platform suffered a power outage that caused the network to stop producing new blocks for a whole 7 hours. The Ton team posted on their X and Telegram account, explaining that that outage was due to an abnormal spike in the transaction load, which thwarted the network's ability to maintain consensus.

The team ensured the users that their assets were not at risk, and they launched a restart protocol at 4am UTC to restore the chain to normal operations.

The price of blockchain's Ton Token took little hit from the outage, with a slight dip of 0.99% on a four-hour basis and down 4% over 24 hours.

Ton block production outage following DOGS airdrop

Several exchanges, including ByBit and Telegram Wallets, experienced similar disruptions after listing the DOGS, a new Ton-based memecion designed to embody the spirit and culture of the Telegram community.

The launch of Dogs caused an abnormal spike in the number of users, driving enormous congestion on the chain due to the growing interest in the Ton ecosystem. The official Dogs channel on Telegram has amassed nearly 17 million subscribers in less than two months since its launch, showing massive popularity among users.

The official listing of Dogs on major exchanges like Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget and Gate came a day after the arrest of Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov in France on August 24.

Ton was created by Durov and his brother Nikolai back in 2018 as a way to integrate blockchain technology with Telegram. TON was an acronym for Telegram Online Network, but now it is commonly known as The Open Network.

Durov was detained by the French authorities after his private jet landed at Le Bourget airport near Paris. He came from Azerbaijan, accompanied by his bodyguard and crypto influencer Fuli Valilova.

The arrest was based on the suspicions that Telegram's platform facilitates criminal activity including drug trafficking, fraud, and child exploitation due to its insufficient moderation and cooperation with law enforcers.

Telegram has since denied all allegations of Durov's connection to the wrongdoings on the site. The company expressed that it is unfair to blame the owners of the platform for the wrongdoings of the users.