TON Network Faces Outage

The Open Network (TON) has experienced a significant outage. According to on-chain data, no transactions were processed for six hours. This disruption is attributed to an abnormal load on the network, which resulted in a consensus loss.

Block Production Halted

Tonscan data revealed that the Telegram-linked blockchain ceased producing new blocks at around 10:11 p.m. UTC on Tuesday. As the cessation grew, major exchanges like Binance and Bybit temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals to and from the network.

TON Blockchain is currently experiencing a disruption in block production, TON announced in an X post. The issue stems from several validators needing help cleaning the database of old transactions, which is causing a loss of consensus.

Efforts to Restart Validators

The network called for validators to restart at 4 a.m. UTC on Wednesday. "If enough validators will restart, consensus will be reestablished," TON stated.

However, the network has yet to respond to The Block's request for comments. Meanwhile, the TON Status group on Telegram reported insufficient validators to restart nodes with the correct flags for mainnet validators with an index under 100. It urged those who still need to restart their nodes 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," it said.

Impact of DOGS Memecoin Airdrop

X user @maverickqe, who claims to be the strategic advisor to the TON Society, said the DOGS memecoin airdrop has sparked a surge in transactions, overloading the network. "Garbage collection overloaded many of [the] validators for enough time for them to lose consensus," the X user wrote.

The Telegram-based memecoin DOGS has garnered significant attention within the crypto community. Its developers outlined plans to expand the token's utility within the Telegram ecosystem.

DOGS launched its airdrop event on Monday, announcing that 81.5% of the fixed supply of 550 billion tokens would go to community members. Last week, DOGS reported that six million verified users requested the airdrop.

Unrest Following Durov's Arrest

The situation unfolded after Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities last week. This arrest sparked a massive backlash from the Telegram and TON communities.

On Tuesday, a Telegram mini-app started a letter advocating for French authorities to release Durov. The letter has since gained nearly 1.7 million signatures.

Toncoin Price Drop

Meanwhile, the network's native token, Toncoin, fell 2.14% in the past 24 hours to trade at $5.27, according to The Block's Toncoin price page.