The Open Network (TON), a Layer 1 network integrated with Telegram, is bracing for outages amid airdrops to up to “hundreds of millions” of eligible users this month. On Sept. 10, TON predicted this month’s airdrops from the popular Telegram mini-app games Hamster Kombat and Catizen will likely cause disruptions. Hamster Kombat claims a user base exceeding 300 users while Catizen claims 25 million players — although critics believe their numbers could be heavily inflated by wholesale bot activity from airdrop hunters. TON’s comments come after the network suffered seven hours of downtime amid multiple outages during the recent DOGS airdrop. TON estimated that 17 million of DOGS’ 53 million users claimed tokens during the two-week drop, pushing the network’s daily users and transactions to heights of 1.1 million and 14.4 million respectively. “In September, we anticipate even larger TGEs for Catizen and Hamster Kombat, which could bring tens or even hundreds of millions of users to the blockchain for the first time,” TON said. “The network will undoubtedly face more technical pressures and possibly some unforeseen issues.” TON ranks among the fastest-growing blockchains of 2024 amid booming adoption of web3 Telegram mini-apps driven by the platform's more than 900 million monthly active users. TON’s total value locked grew 817.5% to $695.2 million from $75.8 million since the start of the year, despite pulling back from a mid-July high of $1.13 billion, according to DeFi Llama. The price of Toncoin is up 3.9% over the past 24 hours, according to The Defiant’s crypto price feeds. PancakeSwap eyes Telegram’s web3 boom The explosive adoption of Telegram mini-apps is attracting interest from projects from elsewhere within the web3 ecosystem. On Sept. 11, PancakeSwap, the team behind the largest decentralized exchange on BNB Chain, launched its Prediction Telegram Bot mini-app in beta. The app allows Telegram users to place bets on BNB price movements over five-minute increments. The move comes after PancakeSwap launched the prediction platform for web users in June. The web platform drove weekly volume of between $3.1 million and $5.3 million since launching, but posted an all-time low of $3.16 million last week, according to Dune Analytics. Telegram to tighten content moderation Telegram’s web3 boom comes as regulators are setting their sights on the booming messaging app. On Aug. 24, Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder and CEO, was arrested by French authorities, facing charges of complicity in a slew of cybercrimes for failing to enforce content moderation on the platform. Durov was released on Aug. 29 and has pushed back against the alleged crimes. However, on Sept. 6, Durov announced plans to increase moderation on the platform. “This year, we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise,” Durov said. “While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities create a bad image for the entire platform, putting the interests of our almost billion users at risk.” Durov added that Telegram’s controversial "people nearby" feature will be deactivated alongside media uploads to its Telegraph blogging platform — which he said was “misused” by anonymous actors. Telegram will also launch a “businesses nearby” feature to promote “legitimate, verified businesses.”