The Open Network (TON) blockchain experienced a halt in block generation for several hours due to the growing excitement around the newly launched meme coin DOGS.
For more than three hours, no new blocks were generated on The Open Network. According to the team of Tonk Inu, a trading platform based on TON, the outage was caused by a network overload due to a sharp increase in the number of transactions, driven by the excitement around DOGS.
Crypto exchange ByBit was the first to react to the network outage, announcing the suspension of deposits and withdrawals via TON until the network was restored to normal operation.
A member of the TON Foundation, known as Justin on X, reported that the network’s validators were overwhelmed by the large amount of transaction and block data, resulting in the need to clean up the database and a temporary loss of consensus. Validators were restarted to regain consensus, and the network resumed normal block generation. As of 3:00 a.m. (GMT+3) on August 28, data from Tonscan indicated that a new block was being generated on the TON network every 7 seconds, with the network operating stably.
The DOGS meme coin that caused the network outage was launched on August 27. Within the first ten hours of its launch, its trading volume reached $1.7 billion, and the market capitalization hit $624 million. According to CoinMarketCap, the price of DOGS surged to $0.0018 immediately after launch but has since dropped to $0.0013.
The new meme coin was launched following the rebranding of the TON Society, conducted in support of Pavel Durov, Co-Founder and CEO of Telegram, who was recently arrested in France. The new logo for Toncoin features a dog in a hoodie, symbolizing the Digital Resistance movement aimed at fighting censorship and protecting digital privacy.
Interest in meme coins is actively growing after the success of Pump.fun, a protocol for minting meme tokens on Solana. A similar service was also launched on the TRON network, and the Dumpy.fun team created a new tool to maximize profits in the meme coin market.
