Toncoin, a digital asset tied to Telegram, stood out in a declining market after the app’s founder, Pavel Durov, broke his silence following his arrest in France.

CryptoSlate data shows that Toncoin rose by over 4% in the past 24 hours, reaching $5 before settling around $4.77 at press time. Meanwhile, top assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, and Solana saw more than 2% losses during the same period.

Despite Toncoin’s gains, IntoTheBlock data reveals that most holders are down. Around 80% of the 43 million addresses are “out of the money,” while only 9.3% of holders, or 5 million addresses, are “in the money.”

Durov’s statement

On Sept. 5, Durov addressed his arrest through his Telegram channel, expressing surprise at the actions of French authorities. He noted that Telegram has a designated representative in the EU for regulatory and legal matters.

Durov pointed out that French authorities had other ways to contact him and mentioned his regular visits to the French Consulate in Dubai.

He emphasized that Telegram is prepared to exit regions that oppose its free speech principles, stating:

“If a country is unhappy with an internet service, the established practice is to start a legal action against the service itself. Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach.

Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for potential abuse of those tools.”

FAQ update

After Durov’s statement, Telegram updated its FAQ page, reflecting a shift in its content moderation policies.

Previously, the platform maintained that all chats were private and did not process content-related requests. However, the updated language now promotes using Telegram’s “report” button to flag illegal content.

Notably, Durov had hinted at further improvements on the messaging application, stating:

“I [have] made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard. We’ve already started that process internally, and I will share more details on our progress with you very soon.”

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The Open Network (TON), the blockchain network associated with Telegram, has surpassed 1 billion transactions, according to data from TON API and aggregated by CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn.

This achievement comes less than a week after the network experienced two major outages caused by the airdrop of the DOGS memecoin.

1 billion transaction

TON’s transaction volume has now exceeded 1.02 billion, emphasizing its critical role in the broader blockchain ecosystem. Remarkably, half of these transactions occurred within the last three months, highlighting the platform’s rapid growth and increasing user engagement.

TON has grown substantially in recent months thanks to its strategic partnership with Telegram, the popular messaging app with almost one billion users globally.

The network has heavily capitalized on this integration to reach approximately 280,000 daily active users and process an average of 800,000 daily transactions, making it one of the most heavily adopted blockchain networks.

In a recent report, crypto exchange Bybit stated that Telegram’s TON integration has the potential to replicate WeChat’s success and become the world’s next SuperApp with the novel addition of Web3 capabilities.

How DOGs caused TON outages

CryptoSlate, using CryptoQuant data, observed that the two recent outages on the TON network were caused by the huge demand generated by the DOGS token airdrop. This surge led to a massive increase in transaction volume, with TON processing an astonishing 20 million transactions between Aug. 27 and 29.

During this period, DOGS transactions accounted for over 30% of the network’s total transactions. The memecoin also drove the average transaction fee on the network to a six-month high, according to Tonstat data.

Ian Wittkopp, head of TON Ventures, noted that the DOGS memecoin token airdrop likely resulted in TON’s highest day of active users.

So, the intense network activity left several validators struggling to clean outdated transaction data from the database, leading to a loss of consensus among validators. This inability to maintain synchronized records inadvertently disrupted the processing of new transactions, bricking the blockchain network.

Meanwhile, crypto analyst Maartun noted another spike in activity on Aug. 29, when the network faced a heavy load. During this period, an average of 100 transactions were processed per block within seconds, with DOGS transactions comprising around 35% of all transactions in some blocks.

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The Open Network (TON), the blockchain network linked to Telegram, has resumed operations following a significant outage that lasted nearly six hours due to a spike in network traffic.

In an Aug. 28 post on X, TON confirmed it was back online and producing blocks as usual.

What caused the outage?

Some community members speculated that the outage might be linked to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov‘s recent arrest in France.

On Aug. 21, Durov was arrested in Paris and was charged with facilitating illegal transactions, refusing to cooperate with law enforcement, and allowing various unlawful activities to occur on the social messaging application.

However, the head of TON Ventures, Ian Wittkopp, clarified that the outage was caused by the high volume of transactions from airdropping over $550 million in value to the community through the DOGS memecoin token issuance. He added that this might have been TON’s highest day of active users.

DOGS is a memecoin associated with the Telegram community. The project, launched on Aug. 26, attracted significant attention due to its unique airdrop approach. On Aug. 27, blockchain explorer Tonscan reported that the memecoin had generated substantial traffic, which caused some “central services” to be temporarily suspended.

TON corroborated this and explained that the network had seen abnormal load activity, which overwhelmed several validators and prevented them from clearing old transactions. This resulted in a loss of consensus.

On Telegram, TON stated:

“Due to high recent activity (>20m transactions in recent 2 days), garbage collection overloaded many of validators for enough time for them to lost consensus with each other.”

In blockchain networks, validators verify transactions within blocks. When block production stops, transactions go unconfirmed, causing service disruptions.

TON stages recovery

Despite the significant outage, the TON’s network token price defied the broader market trend, losing a mild 1.3% over the past 24 hours while other major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped by an average of 6% during the same period.

Meanwhile, some crypto community members saw the outage as a positive sign for TON, likening it to previous outages on other significant blockchains like Solana and Avalanche. They argued that such disruptions on layer-1 networks often signal high adoption.

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Binance, the leading crypto exchange by trading volume, announced it will list Toncoin (TON) today, Aug. 8.

The exchange will enable spot trading for Toncoin with several pairs starting at 10:00 UTC. Withdrawals for Toncoin will commence on Aug. 9 at 10:00 UTC.

This new listing will feature a “seed tag” label, indicating a higher risk and potential volatility. Binance cautioned:

“TON is a new listed token that poses a higher than normal risk, and will likely be subject to high price volatility. Users must exercise sufficient risk management and DYOR (do your own research) to fully understand the project before opting to trade the token.”

Following the news, TON’s price rose 10% to $6.17 as of press time, according to CryptoSlate’s data.

Will the Binance ‘curse’ impact TON?

The Toncoin blockchain has experienced substantial growth over the past year, aided by its integration with the popular messaging platform Telegram.

This boost has positioned Toncoin among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, surpassing networks like Avalanche, Dogecoin, and Cardano.

Yet, recent findings present a potential obstacle to Toncoin’s price continued ascendancy. Research indicates that tokens listed by Binance in 2024 have largely underperformed. According to Coin98 Analytics, nearly all of the 30 tokens listed this year are experiencing declines.

This corroborates a report from crypto researcher Flow, who also noted that most listings on the exchange flopped.

According to the researcher, Binance’s market dominance and liquidity have drawn insiders looking to cash out their holdings. He stated:

“More often than not, tokens launching on Binance are not investment vehicle anymore – all their upside potential are already taken away. Instead, they represent exit liquidity for insiders who capitalize on retail lack of access to quality early investment opportunities.”

Nevertheless, TON enthusiasts believe the Binance listing would yield more positives for the project, improving its credibility and enhancing its visibility to more retailers.

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