In a troubling turn of events, the Telegram-associated TON blockchain has encountered its second outage in just as many days, leaving users and developers alike grappling with service disruptions. The latest hiccup began on Wednesday afternoon during U.S. trading hours, with block production issues first reported at 19:19 UTC.
According to the project’s team, the problem is primarily due to the overwhelming load caused by the DOGS token minting process. The disruption was significant enough to halt the production of new blocks, with the last recorded block timestamped at 12:23 Eastern Time (16:23 UTC). The team has been actively addressing the issue and issued an urgent call on Telegram and X (formerly Twitter) for mainnet validators to update their nodes and restart to stabilize the network.
The latest outage follows a similar incident that occurred just hours earlier, during Asia trading hours, which lasted approximately six hours. Despite the severity of these outages, the impact on the price of the blockchain’s native TON token has been relatively muted. At the time of writing, TON’s price had dropped by just under 1% over a four-hour period and was down about 4% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data.
In light of the ongoing issues, some users have taken to social media with a mix of frustration and humor. One user posted a lighthearted comment on Telegram, expressing a desire to “finally withdraw my dogs” in a playful nod to the DOGS token that seems to be contributing to the network’s woes.
The TON blockchain’s recent troubles have been exacerbated by the popularity of the DOGS token airdrop, which was part of an effort by the Ton Foundation to draw attention to the arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder and CEO. Durov’s arrest in France has been a point of contention, with the Ton Foundation framing it as an unjust action. This controversy has contributed to the stress on the network, compounding the impact of technical issues.
Despite these setbacks, the team behind TON has assured users that their assets are not at risk. They are working diligently to resolve the technical challenges and to mitigate any potential impact on the broader ecosystem. As the blockchain space continues to evolve, the recent spate of outages highlights the growing pains associated with scaling and managing blockchain networks, particularly when they encounter unexpected surges in activity.
In the meantime, as developers work to restore stability, the community’s patience will be tested, and the response from the TON team will be crucial in determining how swiftly and effectively they can address the current disruptions.
