The Open Network experienced a serious disruption, halting the production of new blocks for several hours.
Memecoins, traders, and the network bandwith
The TON blockchain stopped processing new transactions, leaving the network inactive for more than three hours.
Attention $TONK Fam‼️$TON has been experiencing an outage for the past two hours, you can follow the transactions in real-time here: https://t.co/HnLAYRMHRZ
The network experienced a high volume of traffic due to $DOGS, which is likely the cause. This isn’t the first time it… pic.twitter.com/cnGas8BmVo
— Tonk Inu (@tonkinubot) August 28, 2024
This outage followed a fast jump in trading activity related to a new memecoin called DOGS. The network’s troubles began due to the overwhelming market hype surrounding this new token.
At the time of writing, TON’s block explorer, Tonscan showed that the last block, number 45341899, was validated over three hours ago, with no new blocks created since.
The outage also prompted the Bybit to suspend all TON-related deposits and withdrawals, citing the network’s instability until normal operations resume.
A member of the TON Foundation confirmed in a social media post that the network outage was caused by an overload of transactions due to the DOGS memecoin, and then this overload led to TON validators losing consensus.
Who let the dogs out? I mean for real.
The DOGS memecoin launched on August 27 and quickly attracted pretty much attention, being listed on major exchanges like Binance and OKX.
Within just 10 hours, the token saw $1.7 billion in trading volume and reached a peak market cap of $891 million.
Its price hit a high of $0.0018 shortly after launch but has since dropped to about $0.0013. If this is not madness, we don’t know what is.
This frenzy comes shortly after TON Society, the community supporting the network, underwent a rebranding to back Telegram’s creator, Pavel Durov.
On August 26, TON Society updated Toncoin’s logo and profile pictures across its channels to feature the “Resistance Dog,” a symbol of digital resistance and free speech.
The symbol traces back to 2011 when Durov used an image of his dog to stand against censorship, a move that has since made the dog an emblem of defiance and strength.
Community response
In response to Durov’s detention, TON Society launched an Open Letter Mini App within Telegram, urging the release of Durov and advocating for the protection of free expression and privacy on the platform.
The letter already gathered 1.48 million signatures, but Toncoin, the network’s native token dropped 24% since his arrest.
