- An abnormal transaction load knocked out the TON blockchain.
- The outage coincided with the arrest of Pavel Durov, the head of Telegram.
- Durov helped develop TON.
The TON blockchain is back online after suffering an outage of just over seven hours on Wednesday morning, Asia time.
The TON team attributed the disruption to an abnormal spike in transaction load, which impacted the network’s ability to maintain consensus.
“Several validators are unable to clean the database of old transactions, which has led to losing the consensus,” the network said on X.
Surge in activity
The team called on validators to restart the system at 4am UTC to restore normal operations. TON, with a market value of $14 billion, has skidded almost 18% in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko.
The outage followed with a surge in activity on August 26, when several exchanges, including ByBit and Telegram Wallet, experienced disruptions after listing DOGS, a token on the TON blockchain.
DOGS, which rewards users based on their Telegram activity, saw listings on multiple exchanges that day and has dropped only 0.8% over the past 24 hours. Despite its popularity, DOGS is not an official TON project.
The TON Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
The outage struck amid heightened interest in TON’s association with Telegram, whose founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, was arrested by French authorities on August 24.
In 2018, Durov and his brother Nikolai developed TON as a way to integrate blockchain technology with Telegram. The acronym originally stood for Telegram Open Network but now is shorthand for The Open Network.
Durov detained
Durov was detained by French authorities after his private jet landed at Le Bourget airport near Paris. He had flown in from Azerbaijan, accompanied by his bodyguard and crypto influencer Juli Vavilova, according to media reports.
The arrest warrant was issued by Ofmin, an investigative arm of the French judicial police, and stemmed from suspicions that Telegram’s platform facilitates criminal activity, including drug trafficking, fraud, and child exploitation, due to insufficient moderation and cooperation with law enforcement.
Telegram rejected suspicions Durov was connected to wrongdoing on the site.
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the company said in a statement on Sunday.
TON and Telegram
Durov, a Russian-born billionaire, has long been a prominent figure in the tech world.
He founded Telegram in 2013 and left Russia in 2014 after refusing to shut down opposition groups on his previous platform, VKontakte, which he subsequently sold.
In 2018, the Durov brothers raised $1.7 billion through a private sale of TON tokens (then called Grams) in one of the largest cryptocurrency offerings ever.
Stepping away
In October 2019, the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Telegram, accusing it of conducting an unregistered securities offering.
In May 2020, Telegram ceased development of TON. It agreed to pay an $18.5 million settlement and return funds to investors.
Despite the Durov brothers officially stepping away in 2020, a small team of open-source developers continued working on TON, adhering to the original design laid out by its founders.
Although neither Pavel nor Nikolai are involved with the project today, TON is vocal in its support for Durov.
In an open letter, it called his arrest an assault on the right to freedom of expression.
“We call upon France to immediately release Mr. Durov and to respect the social media platform’s right to protect the freedom of expression, privacy of its users, and right to private life,” the network’s team said.
Callan Quinn is an Asia Correspondent for DL News. Got a tip? Email her at callan@dlnews.com.