According to Cointelegraph, The Open Network (TON) experienced another outage on August 28, attributed to a surge in users minting Dogs (DOGS) tokens. The issue began around 19:19 UTC, and the TON block explorer indicated that the last block was produced approximately four hours prior to the report. Network representatives assured users that all funds were secure and that efforts were underway to restore network functionality.
The DOGS memecoin was also responsible for a previous outage on August 27, which resulted in several hours of downtime with no new blocks produced. Block production halted at workchain block 45,341,899, prompting some centralized exchanges to limit TON deposit and withdrawal orders. Block production resumed in the early hours of August 28 after validators were instructed to restart at around 4:00 UTC.
Helius developer Mert criticized both outages, labeling them as “unacceptable” due to the lack of official communication between TON channels and the community, which was unable to access funds during the downtime. The timing of the outage coincided with the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov by French authorities, which caused the price of Toncoin to drop to approximately $5 on August 26. Although the price later rebounded to around $6.11 on August 28 due to misinterpreted news about Durov's release, it fell again following clarification from media sources and Durov's indictment, trading below its 200-day exponential moving average at the time of writing.
