Telegram’s t.me suspension severs the on-ramp to its TON crypto ecosystem

On Monday (July 13), the t.me domain of Telegram was unexpectedly suspended at the registry level, blocking the short links used by millions of people to access its crypto services. The suspension impacted access to Telegram’s TON-based Wallet service, Mini Apps, and other services related to The Open Network (TON).

According to Domain Name Wire, which first reported the incident on July 13, every t.me address stopped resolving after the .me registry placed the domain on hold.

The downtime has greater consequences for cryptocurrency since t.me does much more than simply act as an easy URL shortening service. It is also the main entry point to the on-chain ecosystem of Telegram. Users typically launch Telegram’s custodial Wallet through t.me/wallet, according to the Wallet in Telegram documentation, allowing them to buy, store, and transfer assets such as USDT, Bitcoin, and Gram (GRAM), the native token of The Open Network (TON). With the domain offline, one of the ecosystem’s main access points disappeared as well.

The disruption took place because of a serverHold status, which is an Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) code applied by the .me domain registry and not by Telegram’s domain registrar. As per ICANN documentation, serverHold status removes a domain’s DNS records from the internet, suggesting that any website, email, and other connected services that relies on the domain for functioning can no longer work.

The registry operators sometimes assign serverHold status to a domain due to several reasons, including owing dues or verification problems or due to suspicion of fraud or security issues. As of the time of writing, Telegram and the .me registry have not provided explanations for the hold according to the Domain Name Wire publication and monitoring account International Cyber Digest.

The .me domain is the country-code top-level domain of Montenegro that has been utilized in various branding efforts around the world, as “me” is easily interpreted as a generic suffix. Technical operations are carried out by Identity Digital, while activities concerning the commercial matters are managed by a Montenegro-based registry body.

As per Domain Name Wire, Telegram has signed a partnership agreement with the registry, allowing the latter to assign the t.me domain name as the short-link domain of Telegram. This arrangement implies that one domain is at the center of all the access procedures to Telegram’s messaging ecosystem and its blockchain-based services.

What is exposed

TON refers to itself as a Layer-1 blockchain that has been developed by Telegram along with the open-source community as a whole. Telegram acts as the biggest distribution platform for mainstream users. According to data published on TON’s website, Gram traded at $1.59 on Monday, down 1.99% over the previous 24 hours, giving the token a market capitalization of about $4.33 billion and placing it 21st on CoinMarketCap.

The usage of t.me goes beyond the Wallet alone. Collectible Telegram usernames and phone numbers are tokenized as TON-based digital assets that can be accessed via t.me usernames. Telegram Gifts are converted to TON NFTs, while Mini Apps are linked to the blockchain using TON Connect, often launched using t.me links in the messenger. In practice, every one of the provided operations depends on the functionality of the short domain.

The next move to keep an eye on is whether the .me registry will rescind the serverHold status or provide an explanation as to why it was invoked. It is also worth keeping an eye on whether Telegram will create an additional domain in order to be able to restore access to its crypto services while the issue is still outstanding.

Until this is done, one of the biggest entrances to the cryptocurrency industry and the gateway into the blockchain-industry ecosystem behind a token worth in excess of $4.33 billion becomes even harder to use.