To resolve the problem, the TON Foundation initiated a coordinated effort to restore normalcy. Validators were instructed to restart their systems at 4:00 am UTC on August 28, in order to reestablish consensus.
The Open Network (TON) is finally back online following a significant outage that halted block production for more than three hours. The disruption, caused by an unexpected surge in network activity, raised concerns among users and developers as no new blocks were produced during the downtime.
However, according to an announcement on X, the protocol has resumed normal operations, and no crypto assets were lost.
DOGS Army Sends TON Blockchain Offline
The TON Foundation, which oversees the blockchain, confirmed that the issue was caused by an abnormal load on the network due to the launch of $DOGS, a meme coin based on the TON blockchain.
The meme coin, designed to capture the spirit of the Telegram community, sparked an unusually high number of transactions, which overwhelmed the network’s validators. Within 10 hours of trading on exchanges, $DOGS achieved a trading volume of $1.7 billion and quickly became one of the top-performing tokens in the market.
However, this unexpected load stressed the network’s infrastructure, causing several validators to become overwhelmed resulting in the loss of consensus and effectively halting block production across the network.
“Several validators are unable to clean the database of old transactions, which has led to losing the consensus,” TON said.
TON Network Restored after Coordinated Effort
To resolve the problem, the TON Foundation initiated a coordinated effort to restore normalcy. Validators were instructed to restart their systems at 4:00 am UTC on August 28, in order to reestablish consensus.
TON Blockchain is currently experiencing a disruption in block production.
The issue is occurring due to the abnormal load currently on TON. Several validators are unable to clean the database of old transactions, which has led to losing the consensus.TON Core has issued a call…
— TON 💎 (@ton_blockchain) August 28, 2024
Two hours later, at 5:30 am UTC, the Foundation announced that block production had resumed and the network was back online.
At the time, the TON transaction scanner, Dton.io, showed that the network had processed a total of 231,879,089 blocks, showing that everything is back to normalcy and users can now process transactions.
Binance and Bybit Suspends TON Transactions
During the outage, several major crypto exchanges, including Binance and Bybit temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals for Toncoin (TON), the native token of the protocol.
The companies cited “network instability” as the reason for the halt in trading activity, with Bybit stating that it would only resume operations once the TON network had been fully restored. The move was part of the exchanges’ precautionary measure to prevent any potential loss of funds due to the network instability.
In response, the TON Foundation released a statement during the downtime, assuring users that no digital assets would be lost and that all pending transactions would be processed once the network was back to normal.
“Rest assured your transactions will be made, and no cryptocurrency assets will be lost due to the issue,” the TON Foundation said in a post on X.
next