Telegram’s day without t.me

Yesterday evening, Telegram had an unpleasant incident: the t.me domain stopped resolving for users around the world. The issue was with the domain itself, which suddenly dropped out of the .me DNS zone. At one point, even Pavel Durov had to step in and publicly ask the .me registry what had happened.

t.me has now been restored and is working again. Still, the incident showed how vulnerable even the largest internet services remain when their main entry point depends on a traditional domain name. Just in case, a reminder: Telegram also has other official link domains — telegram.me and telegram.dog. If t.me runs into problems again, they can be used as temporary alternatives.

When TON was being developed, the risks of relying on traditional DNS were clearly on the table. That is why the ecosystem introduced a separate layer for websites — TON Sites, where a website is not tied to familiar Web2 infrastructure and can be opened through a .ton domain. Interestingly, Telegram already has partial support for such addresses: for example, the official TON Foundation website, foundation.ton, still opens directly inside the app.

There is a catch, though. Telegram opens .ton sites through the centralized magic.org relay, and it works very selectively. Only certain sites approved by Telegram are available through this gateway. If you create your own .ton site, you will not be able to open it inside Telegram.

By the way, creating TON Sites has become noticeably easier since our last post on the topic. For example, app.resistance.dog lets you deploy a template-based site or upload your own files in just a few clicks. The recently launched TON Site Builder offers a similar flow: users can choose from several templates or build a page from ready-made blocks. Best of all, it is completely free.

Try building your own .ton site — it takes much less time than it used to. Hopefully, after the t.me incident, TON Sites will get a little more attention, and Telegram will eventually get around to links in the t.ton format. At least let’s write that down as an idea for future MTONGA steps.

@thedailyton