TON Blockchain Faces Six-Hour Outage Amid Surge from DOGS Memecoin Airdrop

The TON blockchain experienced a six-hour outage due to a sudden surge in transactions triggered by the DOGS memecoin airdrop. Validators struggled to process the overload, causing Binance and Bybit to suspend TON-related transactions temporarily.

The Open Network (TON) blockchain faced a significant disruption on Tuesday, going offline for nearly six hours after failing to process any transactions. The issue began around 10:11 p.m. UTC, according to data from Tonscan, which showed that the Telegram-linked blockchain had stopped producing new blocks, leading to a temporary halt in network operations.

The interruption prompted major exchanges like Binance and Bybit to suspend deposits and withdrawals related to TON, leaving users in a state of uncertainty. TON’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) acknowledged the issue, stating, “TON Blockchain is currently experiencing a disruption in block production. The issue is occurring due to the abnormal load currently on TON. Several validators are unable to clean the database of old transactions, which has led to losing the consensus.”

The TON Status group on Telegram reported that validators were instructed to restart their nodes with specific flags to restore the network. However, the recovery was slow, as not enough validators had implemented the necessary changes promptly. “So far, not enough validators have restarted their nodes with correct flags. If you haven’t restarted your nodes with new flags yet, please do so ASAP,” the group urged.

The root cause of the outage appears to be linked to the recent DOGS memecoin airdrop, which generated a massive surge in transactions that overwhelmed the network. X user @maverickqe, who claims to be a strategic advisor to the TON Society, stated, “Garbage collection overloaded many of [the] validators for enough time for them to lose consensus.” The DOGS memecoin, which has gained significant attention within the crypto community, launched its airdrop event on Monday, distributing 81.5% of its 550 billion token supply to community members. The event attracted six million verified users, further straining the TON blockchain.

This incident follows the recent arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov by French authorities, which has already caused unrest within the Telegram and TON communities. In response to Durov’s arrest, a Telegram mini-app initiated a letter campaign advocating for his release, which has since garnered nearly 1.7 million signatures.

As the situation unfolded, Toncoin, the native token of the TON blockchain, saw a decline of 2.14% in value over the past 24 hours, trading at $5.27 according to The Block’s Toncoin price page. The outage highlights the challenges that blockchain networks face in handling unexpected surges in transaction volume and the need for robust infrastructure to maintain network stability.

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