Telegram-Linked TON Blockchain Down Again as Devs Blame DOGS Meme Coin Surge

The Open Network—the Telegram-linked blockchain behind Toncoin (TON), the 10th largest cryptocurrency by market cap—is down for the second time in 24 hours, failing to produce blocks for over three hours as of this writing. And the trouble is being blamed on a meme coin.

Dogs (DOGS), a new cryptocurrency minted on TON, is popular—and is now in the top 100 biggest coins and tokens by market cap, according to CoinGecko. Its price currently stands at $0.00145, with nearly $1.9 billion worth of trading volume over the last day.

The token launched on Monday with an airdrop claim opened to 10 million users of a Telegram-based mini app. But hype around the launch put strain on TON, leading to congestion and finally collapse: The network went down late Tuesday and stopped processing transactions for hours. 

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A TON spokesperson told Decrypt that everything was back to normal on Wednesday morning, and confirmed that the DOGS token claim was at fault for the network issues. But now, as of this writing, the chain hasn’t processed blocks in more than three hours. Network representatives initially called out block production issues shortly after 1pm ET.

“Block production issues began at 19:19 UTC. The disruption appears to be due to heavy load attributed to DOGS token minting. TON Core is working on a solution,” the network’s official account tweeted. “We will continue to update you on the situation as it evolves. User crypto assets are not at risk.”

A new TON Status account on Twitter, which was reshared by the main TON account, asked network validators to update their nodes ahead of a restart.

TON has also been hit hard by the news that encrypted messaging app Telegram’s CEO and co-founder was recently arrested. French authorities arrested Pavel Durov outside of Paris late Saturday, alleging that he’d failed to moderate criminal activity on the popular privacy-centric messaging platform. 

The Russian-born Durov was taken out of custody Wednesday and moved to a court for questioning, according to reports. Telegram originally developed TON, but abandoned the project in 2020 amid regulatory scrutiny—at which point community developers continued to build the ecosystem and evolve the technology.

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Telegram is independent from TON, but the cryptocurrency is popular with the platform’s users—content creators on Telegram can earn the coin and send it to others across the app. Telegram is also using TON now to share ad revenue with channel owners, and launched an off-chain currency called Stars that’s connected with TON.

Meme coins and tokens are a big part of the crypto ecosystem, but are highly volatile assets that disappear often as quickly as they are minted into existence. They are typically based on internet jokes—particularly dog-based memes—and popular with those wanting to make quick returns.

DOGS is currently the second-largest meme coin minted on TON (based on market cap) after Notcoin (NOT), the token of the popular Telegram tap-to-earn game from earlier this year.

Edited by Andrew Hayward