The Open Network (TON) has halted new transactions and hasn’t produced any new blocks for over the pas few hours. On Aug. 28, TON community platform Tonk Inu posted on X that the network was down. They attributed the outage to a surge of market excitement around the newly launched Dogs (DOGS) memecoin.
Due to network issues, the crypto exchange Bybit announced that it would temporarily suspend all deposits and withdrawals for TON until the network is back to normal.
TON network overloaded by DOGS token surge
In an X post, Justin from the TON Foundation said that the recent outage happened because the network became overloaded with a massive number of DOGS transactions. He also mentioned that a surge in transactions swamped the validators, causing them to lose consensus.
The token, available on major exchanges like Binance and OKX, saw a massive trading volume of $1.7 billion in the first 10 hours after its launch. It briefly hit a market cap of $891 million. As per CoinMarketCap, the coin’s price surged to $0.0018 right after its launch, but it’s since dropped to $0.0013.
The latest dog-themed memecoin on TON launches right after the Society’s rebrand on Aug. 26. Specifically, this move supports Telegram creator Pavel Durov, recently arrested in France.
TON Society announced they’re updating Toncoin’s logo to the “Resistance Dog,” a global symbol of Digital Resistance. This symbol nods to 2011 when Durov faced orders to remove posts by liberal thinkers and dissidents.
Furthermore, TON Society released an “Open Letter Mini App” on the messaging platform, calling on French authorities to release Durov from detention. They urged authorities to allow Telegram to continue safeguarding freedom of expression and users’ right to privacy.
