The Toncoin (TON) community on Telegram noted a glitch that caused an inaccurate price display. At one point, the TON token showed a 94% loss, sparking fears of a rug pull. 

A faulty API from Russian sources caused CoinMarketCap to display the wrong price for Toncoin (TON). The glitch only took a few minutes. However, it caused panic that Toncoin had been exploited or rug pulled. TON remained down even after the pricing data returned to normal, trading at $5.16.

For a short period, TON displayed a price of $0.30, though the data did not come from Binance or other trading services. The TON project team revealed all DEX, aggregators and related services were working normally.

The Telegram chat cleared up the situation, stating that the error was on the side of CoinMarketCap. Yet the effect on TON was tied to recent doubts about the project, as investors and users wait to see how the platform will respond to the latest disturbance in normal service. 

TON once again sank below TRON in the market cap rankings even though it still holds the $5 support level. The token seems to have absorbed most of the negative news since the arrest of Pavel Durov, avoiding a deeper crash.

The asset has been sliding for the past few weeks, and trades near a one-month low. The trading glitch comes on the tail of two episodes where the Toncoin network stalled and stopped producing blocks for a few hours.

After the recent network outage, Toncoin returned to regular block production. The network even managed to carry the extra transactions related to the DOGS token airdrop. Toncoin logged more than 1.1M active daily users during the days of the DOGS airdrop, although some services had longer waiting times to receive the token. 

From September 12, the Toncoin ecosystem will also begin its newest airdrop season. The Open League season 6 will offer several tiers of airdrops, with the goal of onboarding new users and retaining their loyalty.

All users must mint a badge and choose their risk tier, which will determine the activities available for earning airdrops. The two tracks include ‘normie’ and ‘degen’ tasks, with both requiring some engagement with the Toncoin NFT and DeFi ecosystem. 

The open season will coincide with the Hamster Kombat campaign, potentially further increasing on-chain users. The last open airdrop season drew in more than 2M additional active wallets on Toncoin, raising activity as high as 700K active daily users.

TON surpasses 1B transactions

Toncoin recovered its block production on August 28, then continued to produce blocks every 3 seconds. The Toncoin chain also broke the milestone of one billion transactions, achieved at more than 81 transactions per second. 

The Toncoin chain uses fast coordination between wallets to achieve its end state, but interactions with token contracts may cause a slowdown. 

The next expansion source for Toncoin will be Hamster Kombat, which is now the widest-reaching Telegram channel. The Hamster Kombat announcement channel connects to more than 52M users, of which many have tried the challenges to farm airdrop points. 

Hamster Kombat may become another stress test for the ecosystem. The game has not yet given a date for its token generation event, but Bitget has already planned the new asset’s listing. Based on Bitget’s timeline, the HK token may be available in some form by September 26. 

Toncoin prepares for $2.5M project fund

The recent rough patch for Toncoin has not stopped the project from expanding and even offering support for new projects. 

The TON Ventures team announced it will set aside $2.5M for a total of five projects building on Toncoin. TON Ventures is a new organization split from the TON Foundation, and equipped with a $40M fund for ecosystem investments. 

The new program for $2.5M will be known as TON Accelerator and will focus directly on product builders. The applications are open to all projects through a dedicated portal. Toncoin’s ecosystem got a boost from tap-to-earn games and mini apps, and TON Ventures aims to repeat that success with a new inflow of user-friendly apps. 

Despite the wide reach, the Toncoin ecosystem suffers from an outflow in value, mostly due to the slide in TON prices. The value locked on Toncoin was getting close to $1B before the arrest of co-founder Pavel Durov. Since then, the slide of TON took the value locked down to $348M. 

Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva