TON blockchain resumes operations following DOGS fuelled outage

Telegram-backed The Open Network came to a halt on August 28, when block production stopped due to network overload caused by excitement around new memecoin DOGS.

Data from TON Explorer revealed that no new blocks were created for a period of approximately seven hours, with block number 39987437 being the last block mined before the outage. However, at the time of writing, block production had resumed.

Tonk Inu, a TON-based memecoin platform, first reported the incident, stating that the launch of DOGS led to high volumes of traffic, which may have led to the outage.

The official X account of the TON blockchain acknowledged the issue, citing “abnormal load,” and highlighted that around 20 million transactions have been processed on the network in the past 48 hours.

“Many validators fail to purge their database of old transactions, leading to a loss of consensus.”

Due to increased load, TON validator nodes reportedly lost consensus. The network’s development team, TON Core, called on validators to reboot their nodes at 04:00 AM UTC. This coordinated reboot aimed to reset validators’ processes, clear the task backlog, and bring them back into sync.

Meanwhile, the TON team assured the community that all assets will remain safe and any pending transactions will be processed.

Leading cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX suspended transactions on the TON blockchain following the outage.

Due to ongoing technical difficulties @ton_blockchainWe have temporarily suspended $TON related deposit and withdrawal transactions. Please consider the possibility of increased volatility and trade responsibly. Rest assured, your funds remain safe and unaffected. pic.twitter.com/1CVSiebYGY

— OKX (@okx) August 28, 2024

While it has not yet been officially confirmed whether the hype around DOGS (DOGS) led to the outage, TON community member Justin placed the blame on the new memecoin.

@cburniske
+ Network overload dud to $DOGS txs overload
+ Garbage collection overloaded most validators long enough for them to lose consensus
+ Validators will be required to be restarted with certain flags at/around 04:00 UTC at the same time to restore consensus

— Justin (@maverickqe) August 28, 2024

DOGS launched on August 26, generating over $1.7 billion in trading volume in the first ten hours. Blockchain researcher Tonscan noted the following day that the memecoin was generating “a lot of traffic,” resulting in some “central services” being temporarily suspended at the time.

As previously reported by crypto.news, the launch of DOGS also disrupted the functioning of numerous cryptocurrency exchanges and caused an overload in the Telegram Wallet.